


no country for old men

by pieandsouffles



Series: your life as a weapon [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Brainwashing, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Gangs, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Mental Instability, Period Typical Attitudes, Politics, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Religion, Slurs, Torture, World War II, gratutious catholic references, this is how I'm sent to hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-04
Updated: 2015-07-05
Packaged: 2018-04-02 19:31:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 32,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4071952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pieandsouffles/pseuds/pieandsouffles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>before HYDRA, there was the war.  before the war, there was steve rogers.  before steve rogers, there was bucky barnes, a boy from brooklyn.</p><p>aka my excuse to use all the catholic and time appropriate historical references I ever wanted in a period-fic</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. sailing to byzantium

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Thegreenlanternslight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thegreenlanternslight/gifts).



> companion piece to toska! read it, don't, whatever. this'll be seven chapters (unless something bizarre happens and I get carried away, which has been known to happen), and I'll add tags as necessary.
> 
> update make that nine chapters im garbage
> 
> nope ten jk fml

_That is no country for old men. The young_  
_In one another's arms, birds in the trees_  
_\---Those dying generations---at their song,_  
_The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,_  
_Fish, flesh, or fowl commend all summer long_  
_Whatever is begotten, born, and dies._

_\- William Butler Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium”_

**September, 1924**

You meet when the world is breathing in.  

It is not the collision of galaxies, the confluence of stars, the shattering of terrestrial plains.  No, it is simple, although not quiet, and it is bloody.  (There will be more blood, later, but this is the first and for that, you remember it.) 

You are seven, and the sun is hot where it touches the small of your back as your shirt rucks up with running.  You are panting, sprinting, and he is trying to keep up next to you and you keep pulling him along, and you wonder - _why doesn’t he hurry up_?

“C’mon, they’re gonna-”

He wheezes, and you glance over at his thin frame, his cheeks flushed in the early autumn sun.  There’s blood streaming from his nose and you want to reach out and wipe it off his lip, his chin, because it stands out too dark against his paper skin.  You don’t. 

“Hey, over here, you gotta-”

“I can’t-” he gasps as you grab him by his left shoulder and drag him into an alleyway.  You almost slip on the cobblestone pavement that’s slick with some strange liquid and you think it looks like - you think it looks like - 

“You’re bleeding,” you protest, pushing at his shoulder, trying to get him to lift his head.  He shakes it, hands on his knees, and his breath rattles in his ribs.  “Hey, what’s wrong with you?”

“Can’t-” he gasps, and you watch as his eyes start to water.  His bag falls off his shoulders to the ground, and pencils spill out onto the wet stones, a small notebook seeping up something that’s a dark brown-red.  

“Hey, hey,” you say, placing your hand on his back and rubbing it in small circles.  “You’re all right, it ain’t anything, they’re gone now-”

He wheezes, and his hand grasps your shirt, clutches at it like it’s the only thing still grounding him to earth.  You keep rubbing his back and you know you’re talking but they’re just words and you’re listening to his breath seize up and you can’t do _anything_ _-_

 _“_ I can’t-” he says and his voice is thin; he’s inhaling but it’s like someone’s squeezing his throat as he does it.  

“You can, you gotta.”  You watch his tears hit the ground, splashing next to the pencils and the notebook - on one of the pages you can see a sketch of a tree.  

“You do that?” you ask, thinking that maybe if you can get him distracted, he’ll be able to breathe again.  

He nods.  

“That’s real good, you know.”  And it is - it’s a drawing of the old maple out in front of the church, and you’ve never seen a kid your age draw like he can.  “You gonna be an artist someday?” 

His wheezing slows.  “Not that good,” he chokes out, shaking his head.  

“You’re wrong,” you say, and you don’t let your hand leave his back.  “Why didn’t ya just run away?” 

He shrugs, and wipes the blood off his face with the back of his hand.  It smears across his skin.  “You didn’t run.” 

“That’s ‘cause someone had to keep ya from getting a broken nose,” you say, and you watch as he picks up his pack, shoves the pencils and the ruined notebook back in.  It’s a practiced motion, and you wonder how many times it’s been knocked off his shoulders before, even this early in the year. 

“You didn’t have to.  I wish you hadn’t,” he says, so quiet you might’ve thought you’d imagined it, if you hadn’t seen his lips move.  

It hurts, and you don’t know why.  You look down at your knuckles and they’re bruised - your ma’ll have words with you tonight for fighting again, and there’ll be more sore spots tomorrow.  You remember the way it felt to land two solid punches across Leary’s face, what his lip felt like as it split under your skin, all because he wouldn’t stop kicking the skinny kid lying on the ground, and you don’t like bullies.  The boy’s words hurt, and it makes you mad, even though you know it shouldn’t - you know that’s not how a good Catholic boy would feel.  You wonder if what you’ve done - if that makes you a bully. 

“Sorry,” you say, and it comes out all wrong, like you spat the word from your mouth, and you want to take it back as soon as it’s out.  So you turn away and wipe the sweat from your brow, and are just about to leave the alley when you hear - 

“Wait.”  

You don’t want to.  You don’t want to and you don’t know why you do it, but you turn around.  

“Thanks,” he says, and he lifts his right hand to brush his bangs back from his forehead; his blond hair is damp and his cheeks are streaked with dirt and tears.  

“Whatever,” you say, because something in you still feels like it’s been slapped.  

The boy’s face falls, and he holds out his hand - tentatively, like he’s worried you might hit him, too.  “My name’s Steve.  What’s yours?” 

You take it.  “James.  But everyone calls me Bucky.”  

“Nice to meet ya, Bucky.”  

He starts walking, and this time, you follow him.  

 

###

 

You get in trouble with your ma and he tells you he’s sorry, sitting on the edge of your cot in the small room thats almost in the kitchen.  You shrug and say it was nothing, even though the motion pulls muscles that still ache from the cane.  

(You wonder if you should say a Hail Mary.  You don’t.) 

He tells you he’s sorry as he’s picking at your only blanket, running his fingers over its threadbare surface and you wonder if he’s got nice blankets back home.  You know he has a home, because he doesn’t live at the orphanage, where they send boys to get lost, to get off the streets.  He’d waited for you in the yard after school and you’d invited him over, even though you didn’t know why, but your mom is gone at her job and your house is empty and it feels like an island.   

He tells you he’s sorry and you forgive him, as easy as breathing.  You remember the way his breath trembled in his lungs, the way his eyes washed over with tears, how his notebook took up blood from the cobblestones, and you forgive him. 

He comes home with you more, after that.  

 

* * *

**November, 1924**

You rub at your knuckles as you walk Steve home from school.  They’ve just now healed, scabs beginning to flake with each morning, and your ma doesn’t stare at them with distaste anymore.  It’s quiet on the streets, just the sound of November wind, and you huddle further in your coat.  “C’mon, tell me more about your parents!” you whine, trailing behind Steve, jostling his shoulder.  “I gotta get ‘em to like me!”  

Steve smiles.  “My ma’s a nurse.  Works in a TB ward in the clinic just in the next door precinct.”

“Sounds dangerous,” you say, because it does.  Consumption isn’t anything to joke about, or so your ma has told you.  

“It ain’t bad.  She’s real careful, never gets sick.”  

“But you do.”  The words are out of your mouth before you have time to bite them back. 

“Yeah.” 

“And your pa?”

“He was in the army,” Steve says, but his voice has sobered, and you watch as his feet start to drag.  

“He dead?” 

“Yeah.  Got gassed or somethin’.  Ma never told me, ‘cause she doesn’t like to talk about it.  He was in the 107th.”  He says it like he’s reciting a speech, like it’s something he’s said a thousand times over and again.  You think maybe he has.  

“My older sister died from the flu,” you offer.  

Steve nods, like he’s used to hearing the same thing from lots of kids their age.  “I’m sorry, Buck.”

“That’s okay,” you say, kicking absently at a pile of leaves left over from the few trees still standing around the neighborhood.  Turning the corner, you see some men working on the road at the end of the street.  “They putting in a new road?” 

“I guess,” Steve says, shrugging.  “Mr. Brady’s been around a lot.”  

You nod - sometimes Mr. Brady comes around and passes out candy to your neighborhood, comes to the door and speaks in soft tones to your ma.  You never ask what they talk about, because it’s not for you to understand.  You see him sometimes, when your ma goes to the polls, but that’s for grown-ups, and you don’t need to understand.   

(Your ma tells you not to ask.) 

You meet Steve’s ma and she’s gentle, with a soft voice and soft hands and eyes that sparkle like Steve’s in the sunlight.  She’s thin, like Steve, and her pale hair is pinned back as she goes to work, leaves you and Steve to play.  

You are young, and you don’t have work - you spend the day playing cowboys and Indians in the small square in front of Steve’s building, dodging passerby and watching for Steve’s breathing.  You own the streets, feet pounding on the pavement and cheeks flushing scarlet in the late autumn wind.  

 

* * *

**January, 1925**

Snowfall silences Brooklyn.  You stay inside, with Steve, huddled by the heater as his mom stirs soup in the kitchen.  You don’t spend a lot of time at your place, anymore, because your dad keeps coming home late and you lie awake as your ma yells him into their bedroom.  She says there’s alcohol on his breath, and you learn the smell of moonshine because it seeps from his pores.  

Steve leans against your side and you throw an arm around his narrow shoulders, catching a glimpse of his hollowed-out cheeks in the corner of your eye.  He sputters out a cough and you give him your share of the blanket, move him closer to the heater.  He closes his eyes, leans his head back against the wall, and breathes. 

“Thanks.” 

“Any time, pal,” you whisper, turning back to the single-paned glass to watch the snow come down.  

 

* * *

**April, 1925**

There are new marks on your knuckles come spring, when Danny Concanon pushes Steve down in the yard after school, throws his coat after him, even though it’s raining hard enough to bring down a house.  You split the skin on his cheek and you smile as you do it, even as Steve’s pulling at your arm and begging you to stop.  

“Why’d you do that?” he asks you later.  He always asks you that.  

“Don’t like bullies,” you say, holding a tissue to your nose where Danny managed to clock you back.  “Don’t care who they are.”  

Steve’s brow furrows and you watch as he looks for a response; his tongue works his loose tooth and his shoulders tense.  “Ya didn’t have to hit him, though.  It just gets you hurt.”  

“And what, have you catch your death?” you joke, ruffling his hair, which he smooths back down.  “Come on, pal.  Do you wanna do the reading?” 

Steve rolls his eyes and pulls out his workbook.  “Okay.” 

(He wasn’t at school last week because he couldn’t breathe real well.  You’ve been helping him catch up.) 

“Okay.” 

 

###

 

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.  It has been seven days since my last confession.”  

“What do you wish to confess?”

“I fought someone last week.  He punched my friend and I hit him back.”  

“Do you feel repentance for what you have done?” 

“If I hadn’t hit him, they woulda just kept hitting Steve.  I was protectin’ him.”  

“Are you sorry for what you have done?” 

“No, Father.  I’d do it again.”  

“Think on what Christ would have done.  When you have thought more about this sin, come back if you are truly repentant, and the Lord God will forgive your sin.”  

“Okay, Father.  Thank you.”

 

###

 

You do not remember time, but you can remember fights.  You kick and scratch and punch your way through alleys, through boys that tower over you, because you know he can’t breathe if he gets thrown around.  When you see him gone from the yard, you follow footsteps to the base of an old oak tree, and you use your sleeve to wipe away the blood on his cheeks.  Your ma yells at you later, because you ruined your good shirt, but you can’t bring yourself to care.  It’s the first time you’ll want to yell at her about Steve, because she doesn’t understand that he needs protecting, and you’re the only one that will do it.  She doesn’t understand that he needs a shield.  

 

* * *

**October, 1926**

Your pa dies when you are nine years old.  He leaves one night for the speakeasies and he doesn’t come back.  

Your ma doesn’t cry, just rubs at the bruises that litter her shoulders, her arms, her back, like if she presses hard enough, she might remember the feel of his fingers.  

Steve tells you he’s sorry, but you don’t say anything back, because you sure as hell aren’t.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> meow! leave comments, whatever, idc. i have two more chapters written but idk when imma get around to editing/posting. the tumblr is over at amerrichavez if you wanna come hang out and cry about things!


	2. yearning to breathe free

_Give me your tired, your poor,_  
_Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,_  
_The wretched refuse of your teeming shore._  
_Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,  
_ _I lift my lamp beside the golden door!_

_\- Emma Lazarus, "The New Colossus"_

 

**October, 1929**

You are twelve, and the world is burning.

It’s Tuesday, and you convinced Steve to skip school with you so that you could take the train into Manhattan.  You tell him you found the money on the sidewalk when he asks you how you’ll afford the trip.  It’s a lie.  You learned how to pick pockets when you were eight years old and realized that Mrs. Rogers didn’t always have the money to pay for Steve’s medicine.  Father Daniels tells you that stealing is a sin, but you can’t bring yourself to repent.  Surely God understands that you can’t let Steve - 

(It’s the first time you lie to him about where you get your money, and it won’t be the last.)   

You take the train into Manhattan and smile at the way Steve pulls out his sketchbook and starts drawing the men in suits, their briefcases hanging at their sides.  They are frowning, shoulders tense, and you wonder why they look like they’re rearing for a fight.  They whisper: you hear the words, “stocks,” and “trading,” and you wonder what’s happening that’s so important. 

You reach Manhattan, and the world is burning.  Steve turns to you with clouded eyes as a man rushes down the street, joining a growing mob outside of a bank.  

“It’s gonna be okay, Stevie,” you say, slinging an arm around his bony shoulders, even though you don’t know what you’re talking about.  “Ain’t nothing to worry about.”  

Steve nods, and you take him to Central Park, try to make the furrow between his brows disappear.  

The park is empty, but it is not quiet.  You try to escape the sound of the city, but it follows you like a reluctant shadow, lingering even when the skies cast over.  

 

* * *

**November, 1929**

Steve is silent as you walk home from school, scuffing his shoes along the ground.  

“Talk to me, pal.” 

“My ma-” he says.  Stops.  “She’s gotta start picking up extra shifts down in the TB ward.”  

You don’t say anything, because you don’t know what to say.  You wrap an arm around his skinny shoulders, and his fragile frame flutters at your side like a leaf that’s decomposed and left only it’s skeleton behind.  You worry that some day he might just disappear.  

“It’s bad, Buck,” he says.  “It’s real bad.” 

“I’m real sorry, Stevie,” you say, and notice that his shoulders are shaking.  “Hey, Steve, hey now, come on,” you mumble, sitting down on the sidewalk and rubbing his back as he starts to wheeze.  You recognize a panic attack and place your other hand on his chest.  

“Breathe, Stevie.  Come on, listen to my voice, in through your nose, out through your mouth-”

Steve does as you say, and you rub small circles on his chest as his shaking slows.  The tears don’t stop.  

“What if she dies, Buck?  What if-”

You grip his shoulder, firm, and turn him to face you.  “Ya can’t think like that, Stevie.  Don’t ever think like that.”  Steve starts to pull away, but you stop him.  “Hey.  Look at me.”  

He does.  

“I’ll always be here for you, ‘kay?”  

Steve huffs a laugh and turns his gaze to the ground.  “You don’t know that, Buck. You can’t know that.”  

“I can,” you say, and your voice is full of the confidence only a child can muster. “Okay? I’m with you ’til the end of the line.”

 

* * *

**February, 1930**

Your ma tells you to stop spending time with “that Rogers kid.” You look at your mother like you don’t know her.  

“You could have so many other friends, James, if you didn’t spend so much time with him.”  

“Don’t want other friends.” 

“He’s changed you, James, and not for the better.  You never used to get in fights, and I know you’ve been skipping Mass-”

You leave to find shelter in the winter rain.  Steve answers the door and his mother makes soup for dinner, and nobody talks about how it’s just broth, cabbage, and boiled potatoes.  You think you are beginning to understand.  

(You steal a little more often, after that.) 

 

* * *

**September, 1930**

Your ma tells you that the banks are failing and you can’t believe her.  Banks don’t fail, they’re too big.  

You don’t say anything when your ma starts making potatoes every night, too.  

 

* * *

**December, 1930**

You are thirteen and Steve has pneumonia and his ma has the flu and you spend all your time at the Rogers’ because you don’t know what else to do.  

You use up the money you’ve saved on medicine for Steve, and you sit at his side while he drifts in and out of fevered dreams.  Every time he coughs, your breath sticks in your throat because you fear this may be the last time you ever hear him breathe.  He told you, the first night, that you didn’t have to be there, that you should go home and stay away because you might get sick.  You messed up his hair and called him an idiot, and he smiled, even laughed until the sound was cut off by a wet cough and you had to help him breathe.

“Bucky,” Steve says one night, speaking into your leg, where you’re propped up against his flimsy headboard.  

“Yeah, Stevie?  What is it?”  

“Will ya read to me?” 

“Yeah,” you say. “Yeah, sure.”  You grab a _Hardy Boys_ book and read to him until he falls asleep. 

Father Daniels comes to give Steve his last rites the next day.  You try to push him out of the room, but your arms are too weak from malnutrition and your breath comes in ragged gasps as you try not to cry. 

“Stop, _stop_ ,” you manage to choke, “he’s not - he’s not gonna die, he can’t die, get _out-_ ”

Father Daniels pushes you aside like you are nothing, and you have to remind yourself that you cannot hit a priest.  He gives Steve his last rites anyways, but Steve is not awake to hear them, sweat beading on his brow.  

The Father leans down next to you when he’s done.  He says, “He will be with the Lord, James.  That is the greatest blessing of all.”  

You hug your legs harder and say nothing, because he’s wrong.  Steve belongs here, with you.  Or - well.  

(You know you belong with him.)  

 

The next day, Steve’s fever breaks.  You’re crying when he wakes up and says, in a voice that sounds like sand, “C’mon, Buck, you didn’t think I’d go that easy, did you?” 

It’s the best sound you’ve ever heard.  

 

* * *

**April, 1931**

You’ve heard of work down at the docks for boys a bit older than yourself, but you try and get a job anyways.  The foreman laughs at you, and you wish to anything that you were strong enough to do the work.  There are boys in your class at school that can bring home a steady paycheck for their families, and you wish like hell that you could provide for Steve.  

“Sir,” you say, “I can do it, sir.  I can help with whatever ya need.”  

“Son,” one of the boys says in your ear, smirking, “the only thing you’d be good for is a quick suck behind the crates.  Unless you wanna work for your money the hard way, beat it.”  

You leave.

(The next night, you come back.)  

 

* * *

**August, 1931**

Mr. Brady comes around the neighborhood looking for boys to help him out in the big city.  You try to volunteer but he ruffles your hair and says, “Maybe next year, kid.”  You try not to let your disappointment show on your face.  

 

#

 

“Bless me father, for I have sinned.  It has been three weeks since my last confession.”  

I yelled at my ma last week, and I guess I feel pretty terrible about it, since it’s a sin and all.”

“Why did you raise your voice at your mother?” 

“She - she said something.”

“What does the Lord tell you about honoring thy mother?”  

“Well, yeah, Father, but she was saying stuff about _Steve-_ ”

“To receive absolution, you must prove your contrition to our Lord God.  You do not sound like you wish absolution from the Lord.” 

“You don’t get it, Father.  She told me that Ste- that _someone_ \- that I’m gonna find myself ‘lost in a dark wood’ ‘cause of my friend and that I’ll lose the path of righteousness forever.”  

“How does this relate to your act of contrition?” 

“See, that’s just the thing.  I ain’t sinned, Father, because she wasn’t right.  St- _he_ ain’t like that.  He’s good.  He’s - I’m the one that’s not good.”  

“What else?”  

“I - I been…”

“Yes, my son?”

“There’s boys down at the dock, Father.  They… pay.  They pay good.”  

“James-”

“I thought this was supposed to be confidential, Father, given the screens and all.”  

“-My son.  The Lord forbids such acts as an abomination.  You must cease in order to live in righteousness, if you wish to find a place in the life eternal at Christ’s table.” 

“I can’t stop, Father.  If I stop, he could die.  There could be somethin’ - some sickness, I don’t know-”

“Who do you talk about?”

“My friend, Father.  He’s small.  Sick all the time.  I just want to help.  Surely that doesn’t make me a sinner?” 

“Why do you protect him?” 

“Father, I don’t know what you’re tryin’ to say, but-”

“James.  It is wrong.”

“It ain’t like that!  You don’t got no idea what it’s like!”  

 “Do you wish absolution?”  

“I don’t want nothin’ from your God.”  

  

* * *

**October, 1931**

You are fourteen years old when your ma dies.  It’s sudden, and you don’t get to say goodbye.  The last thing she ever tells you is to make sure you got home for dinner, because you are leaving for the Rogers’ and you always stay too late.  She’s in bed, and she tells you it’s just a cough and not to worry, that she’ll be fine enough in a few days.  You leave without a backwards glance.    

When you come back, hours past dinnertime, she is cold in her bed.  You stand at her side for what feels like ages, and you want to rip her back to consciousness, so that you can tell her all the things you never did - that you loved her, sure as hell, and that you would make her proud, someday.  That it wasn’t her fault, that dad died, that she should stop holding her shoulders like she was gonna fall apart if she didn’t hold on tight enough.  

You watch as they take her body away from you and you can’t help but remember little Stevie, hunched over in a ball on his bed with a rattling cough.  How he looked the day Father Daniels came to give him his last rites, when you were sure that he was gonna die and leave you without a mooring on Earth.  (How you cried and pushed and shoved because you couldn’t believe - you couldn’t believe-)  

You remember, and you run through the darkened, smoke-filled streets of Brooklyn to climb up the fire escape by his window, because suddenly you’re convinced that he’s gonna be gone too, that the same fate that took your ma will take your best friend, your -  

(Your what?  Your sun?) 

Tears stream down your dirt-streaked cheeks when you see him safe in bed, but he hears you outside on the iron grate and opens the latch.  You almost fall into his room, landing in a heap on the floor, clutching at Steve’s nightclothes.  

“What, Buck, what is it?” he asks, bending down next to you on fragile knees that could snap under ten pounds of pressure, and you want to hold him and make sure he can’t ever escape you.  

“My ma-” you manage to say.  “My ma-”

Steve’s eyes widen with understanding, but before he can say anything, you bring him into your arms.  You’re aware of your tears seeping into his nightshirt, but you can’t care, because his bones are fragile under yours and his skin smells like sweat and smoke and homemade soap and you know he’s crying, too.  

(If one of them had to die-)

He picks you up off the floor, never breaking contact, and lets you lie down next to him.  He doesn’t say anything when you bury your face in his shoulder, only runs his hands through your hair and you feel your chest throb in time to his shaky breathing.  

You think that, were Steve to leave you behind too, you’d follow him without a second thought.  You’d risk an eternity in hell because if God couldn’t understand your inability to live in a world without Steve Rogers, you didn’t have any need for God. 

 

(-you’re glad it was her.)

 

###

 

You try to recall the feeling of deadened leaves on your skin, the sensation of the sun on your back, the way his hair glowed like corn husks in the sunset, as coal dust blew like ash through the air.  You think you can remember how his bones felt under your hands, how his ribcage rose and fell as he slept, and you waited to see if he would ever wake up again.  You know you remember bruises on your knuckles, on your cheekbone below your left eye, when you lingered just too long at a rich man’s pocket because you just needed to see him smile again.  The feel of choking, of strong hands gripping your hair and hushed curses into the still of the shipyard after dusk.  

You wonder if it was worth it.  You wonder if he ever found out just how much you cared.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so jsyk i am definitely a political science and history major. just warning you, i nerd out really hard about historical pieces and get really into making sure they're accurate/engaging the time period! thanks for reading, everyone <3 love you alllll


	3. an overwhelming question

_Let us go then, you and I,_  
_When the evening is spread out against the sky_  
_Like a patient etherized upon a table;_  
_Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,_  
_The muttering retreats_  
_Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels_  
_And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:_  
_Streets that follow like a tedious argument_  
_Of insidious intent_  
_To lead you to an overwhelming question…_  
_Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”  
_ _Let us go and make our visit._

_\- T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”_

 

**June, 1932**

“Buck, things are gonna be different.  Anything’s gotta be better than Hoover.  You’ve seen the papers, the photos from the city.  Those camps.  Things can’t really get worse.”  

You shrug your assent, leaning back against Steve’s headboard.  You don’t spend much time at the orphanage, mostly ‘cause you’re always trying to avoid a beating from the nuns.  They catch you with scraped knuckles and no matter what you tell them, you always get the cane for it.  “Maybe, Stevie, but ya heard what he said on the radio.  All that about the government just sitting back?  That’s all Hoover ever did.  Don’t see how we’re gonna get out of this unless we try somethin’ else.”  

Steve looks up from his maths homework, nudging your calf with his foot.  “Stop being such a pessimist, Buck.  Things are gonna change.  We’ll be off potatoes soon enough,” he jokes, grinning, and you can’t help but smile back.  

“Sure, punk, but first he’s gotta get the nomination, and then he’s gotta win.  You just try workin’ politics like that, see how it turns out for you.”  

Steve smiles, small and shy.  “Nah, I couldn’t ever be a politician.  You could, I think.  You got the face for it.”  

You had filled out in a matter of months, shooting up and spreading out and suddenly they were taking you down at the shipyards and you were making an honest living.  You leer at Steve.  “You sayin’ I’m pretty?”  

“Didn’t say any such thing,” Steve disagrees, but his eyes crinkle at the corners, betraying his slight frown.  You laugh and muss his hair.  

“Aw, come on, Buck,” Steve says, flattening it back down, even though the cowlick in the back still refuses to lie flat.  “You ever think of talkin’ to Mr. Brady?  He could maybe get you a good job workin’ for the party.”  

You shake your head.  “Maybe, Steve.  Maybe.”  

 

You don’t tell him that, two months earlier, you’d gone to Mr. Brady and asked for a job with the party.  He’d looked at your body, lanky and uncoordinated from its growth, and smiled long and slow.  

“I could use a boy like you,” he said.  “Yeah, I could use you.”  

You didn’t ask what he meant.  It didn’t matter.  

(You knew you’d do anything.)  

 

* * *

**September, 1932**

You remember cigar smoke, purpling and billowing from behind a cherrywood desk.  A gun, across from you, bullets removed, laying next to a fountain pen like it had every right to be there.  

“James,” Mr. Brady says, rubbing at a spot above his eyes.  “This depression has been harder on us than anyone could’a predicted.  The party isn’t the same as it used to be.” 

“I don’t understand, sir,” you say, your eyes still fixated on the gun, like you can’t bear to look away.  

“We’re entering a new era here in the city.  Tammany Hall doesn’t do what it used to anymore, not with the - well, I’m sure you heard about the incident a few years back down in your part of Brooklyn.  That, the Castellammarese.  Do you know what it all means for the party?”  

You look up at the tone of his voice.  Worried.  “No, sir.” 

“There’s new power in town, kid, and it’s got a broad reach and a strong arm.  Needs are changing - the party’s changing.  Means we can’t promise you the same payment you’ve been getting.”  

(A few dollar bills for a quick fuck in a musty hotel room in the city, for getting on your knees, and you go home and give it to Steve and he doesn’t know, he can’t ever know-)

“I understand, sir, but I don’t know what you want me to do about it.” 

Mr. Brady breathes deeply, puffs again on his cigar.  Takes a sip of bootlegged whiskey and sets the glass down on the desk with something close to reverence.  

“Son, how do you feel about the Italians?” 

The question surprises you, because you know how everyone in your quarter of Brooklyn feels about the Italians.  There was a reason your ma kept her maiden name a secret, and thanked God every day that her roots were in Milan.  The incident with the White Hand.  You still remember it, remember hiding on the stoop of a brownstone and watching groups of men walk by, their hands on their guns. 

“I ain’t got an opinion, sir,” you lie, because you think that’s the answer he’s looking for.  

“Good,” Mr. Brady breathes.  “That’s real good.” 

 

* * *

**November, 1932**

“Buck!”  

You shake your head at the sound because you’re still deep in your dream, the gun hot in your palm and the sound of shots ringing in your ears.  You watch the target pepper and you feel satisfaction because you’re _good_ at this, and Mr. Brady claps you on the back and says, “Well done, son.  You’ll be a fine shooter.”  

“Wake up, you lug!” Steve says, shaking your shoulders and you open an eye to find a paper shoved in your face.  

“What the hell, Stevie?” you say, pulling yourself upright and feeling your back scream where you injured it picking up crates yesterday.  “So it’s a damn paper, so what?” 

Steve jumps onto your bed, pointing furiously at the headline. 

“ROOSEVELT WINNER IN LANDSLIDE! DEMOCRATS CONTROL WET CONGRESS; LEHMAN GOVERNOR, O’BRIEN MAYOR”

You blink sleep out of your eyes and look back up at Steve, and he’s grinning.  “They’re gonna end prohibition, Buck, start getting the tax revenues back up, and they’re saying there’s gonna be work, and you won’t have to keep helping out me and my ma-”

“Hey, hey, Stevie,” you say, putting a hand on his shoulder.  The dorm room is empty, and you wonder where everyone’s gone, before you remember that it’s a Wednesday and you’re probably already late for school.  “You don’t gotta - I’ll always help out you and your ma.  Who else am I gonna give my hard-earned money to?” 

“You could keep it,” Steve says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.  “Save up, go to school-”

“Aw, Stevie,” you say, cuffing him on the shoulder.  “What’s a guy like me gonna do with a college education? You, though - Steve Rogers, the artist.”

Steve looks at you like you’re crazy, and you think maybe you are.  Maybe it is crazy, what you’d do to keep Steve Rogers breathing, if even just for another day, another hour.  

“You don’t gotta play dumb, Buck.  I know you try to do that around the dames and all, but you don’t gotta do that around me.”  

“Ain’t doin’ nothing,” you say.  “You’re the brains of this operation.” 

Steve shakes his head, and you think he mumbles something that sounds like “we both know that’s not true.”  You don’t say anything, mostly because you know it’s not worth the fight. 

(You think about your dream.  The target has become a man, his olive skin spattered with blood.  There is blood on your flesh, too, entrenched in the creases of your palms, freckling your arms like the sun freckles Irish shoulders.)

“C’mon,” Steve says.  “We’re already late for school.”  

(You wonder what it is you’ve become.)

 

* * *

**March, 1933**

You wake in March from a snow-filled slumber, from the cold that stings your toes and makes Steve’s breath rattle in his lungs, condensation puffing out from his mouth at irregular intervals.  Your boss gives you a small bottle of whiskey for your birthday

(along with your first issued knife)

and you break it open in Steve’s apartment two nights later, since his ma is gonna be out at the ward all night and you’ve always wanted to see what all the fuss was about.  

“Buck, this is real dangerous,” he protests as you uncork the bottle, shaking its contents slightly and watching bubbles form near the top.  “This is illegal!” 

You shrug.  “Look, if you don’t wanna try it, I can go give it back to the boys at the docks,” you say.  You’re lying.  You didn’t get this at the shipyard.  You haven’t worked there for a while now.  

Steve blushes and stammers, “No - I mean, they gave it to you, I guess-”

You roll your eyes.  “Well, now that you’re finished with your crisis of conscience, can we get on with it?” 

Steve looks like he’s about to say something, so you take a huge swig of the whiskey and almost kill yourself making sure you don’t spit it right back out.  You swallow with effort, eyes stinging and throat burning and feeling like you wanna throw it right back up.  

“That’s terrible,” you say, staring at the bottle like it’d personally offended you.

“It can’t be that bad,” Steve says, all nonchalant, but you know what this is.  

“You think you can handle it?” 

“’S not what I said,” Steve says into his knees, where he’s drawn them up to his chin.  

“Bet you can’t,” you tease, and just like that, Steve is reaching for the bottle.  You give it up with a swell of triumph.  “Don’t spit it out, we gotta save it if we’re gonna get drunk.” 

“Ain’t gonna spit it out, Buck,” Steve says, mock-wounded, and tips the bottle back.  

You see the moment the taste hits him - his whole body tenses and he wrenches the flask away from his lips.  You think he’s gonna spit it out and you’re ready to rib him for it when he swallows, and hands the bottle back to you, not even wincing as he does it.  

“You cheated.”

“I did no such thing,” he says, and you know he’s right, so you don’t respond, just take another swig of the whiskey and try hard again not to throw it back up.  

You sit there on the floor, just the two of you, listening to rain patter on the windows and sharing bootlegged whiskey.  Steve starts to flush a healthy color, for once, and eventually you make your way to the living room, where you pile couch cushions on the floor the way you did when you were kids.  Steve slumps next to you with a happy sigh, letting his head lean against your shoulder.  You wonder if his hair would feel any different under your fingers now, so long after you last touched him with the innocence of a child.  

Your fingers know his hair, and your left palm finds it before you can stop yourself.  Steve doesn’t seem to mind, just deepens his breathing next to you.  

“Buck-” he starts, then hiccups.  “Where’d you really get the whiskey?”  

You frown.  “I told ya.  Got it from the boys down at the docks.”  

Steve sags a little against you, like he’s disappointed, and you can’t imagine what he’d be disappointed about.  

“Stevie? Hey,” you say, nudging him a little with your elbow until he twists to look up at you.  His lips, slick still with his last sip of whiskey, gleam in the light of the streetlight outside of the fire escape, and your finger unthinkingly traces their shape.  You lift your thumb to your mouth.  Suck.  

Steve’s eyes, dark in the light, shine with the promise of a smile.  “You okay, pal?” he asks, and you know he can smell the liquor on your breath.  

“Just.  It’s just the whiskey,” you say, but you can’t tear your eyes away from his lips.  

“Bucky,” Steve starts, straightening further.  

You rip your gaze off his lips and focus on the window, on the way the rain hits the fire escape.  “Need a cigarette,” you say, and you get up from the couch cushions because you can’t stand to be so close to him, so close and so far from touching in any way that matters.  

Steve stays where he sits, on the floor of the living room, and watches as you walk over to the fire escape and perch on the windowsill so that you can blow your smoke out into the storm.  It wouldn’t do to give Steve an asthma attack now.  

“Bucky…” Steve starts again, and you worry for one terrible second that he _knows_.  He searches your face, and then something in his falls away.  “You’re gonna give yourself bad lungs if ya keep smoking those things,” he says, and you know that wasn’t what he meant to say, not at all.  

Your hand shakes where it’s gripping the cigarette.  “Yeah, Steve,” you say.  “I know.  Said it before, I’ll say it again - guess I’m not really the brains of this friendship, huh?” 

Steve stands and crosses the room carefully, dodging cushions and your jacket, still wet from your walk over to the Rogers’.  You watch the way he picks a path across the room, the little furrow in his brows that means he’s concentrating, his small hands, thin bones, like matchsticks.  His hair glows pale silver, a shade more vivid than grey, and his skin looks like translucent wax.  He is so breakable, and you think, as you watch him, that some part of you would break for him again and again and again if only it meant you could protect him from harm.  You make out his lips, red against the pale of his face, and know that Father Daniels was right, that there is something wrong with you, that your feelings are not pure.  

(Later, you will lose your virginity to Ciara O’Donnell, and you will grip her slim hips and picture Steve, tug soft on her blonde hair and imagine that it’s Steve’s, look at her lips and only be able to see Steve’s bow, his lower lip that’s just too plush for a man, but just right for a dame.)

Steve sits on the windowsill across from you, even though you know he must feel the effect of the smoke here, this close.  You can’t bear to make him move.  He sits with you until your cigarette is just ash in your palm and your hand has stopped shaking, and then he leads you into his room, maneuvers you into his bed.  

You fall asleep to the smell of Steve Rogers, and you think that this birthday may be the best one yet.  

 

* * *

**April, 1934**

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.  It has been three weeks since my last confession.  Give or take.”

“What do you wish to confess?” 

“I’m in love with someone I can’t have.”  

“Love is not a sin.”  

“He’s not a dame.” 

“James.”  

“Like I said, Father.”

“You must realize, James, that these desires are the Devil’s temptation.  They are designed to lure you into sin.  You must resist Satan, as Christ did during his forty days in the desert.”  

“I’m not as strong as Jesus, Father.  Besides, I thought those were all just parables anyways-”  

“No man is as strong as Jesus.  But you must learn to rid yourself of these desires.  They are not natural.  They are an abomination.”  

“I don’t think I can do that, Father.”  

“Are you here to repent, James?”  

“I don’t know.  I love him, Father.  It doesn’t feel dirty.  It feels pure.”  

“The Devil will have you think that sins are justifiable, given the proper cause.  It is all his design to attract you to a life of sin.”  

“Father-”

“Yes, James?” 

“Do ya think it’s too late for me?”

“It is never too late for you to return to the ways of the Lord.”  

“I’ve done it all in his name, Father.  Everything I do, it’s for him.  Every sin I commit, it’s all for him.  I can’t stop loving him.  I ain’t got any idea who I would be without him.”  

“Then I cannot absolve you of your sins.  James, you must heed the word of the Lord.  He is not good for you, if this is the man he causes you to be.  He is the messenger of Satan.”  

“The thing is, Father…” 

“Yes, James?” 

“I guess I just don’t give a damn.”

 

* * *

**July, 1935**

The sun rises with a reluctance only born of summer mornings, dragging its limbs over the ocean to illuminate the sparrows that sing for its coming.  Cobblestone streets are lined with your country’s colors, bunting banners flapping from storefronts in the post-dawn quiet, a breeze stirring dust from the streets and clouding the air.  It has not rained in a week, and the sun filters through the early morning haze, casting slivers of light into alleys, where rats worry at discarded bones.  You make your way across the city, and you sidestep police officers setting up blockades, cutting off roads; they are Irish.  You are Irish, but you do not work for them anymore.  You must be careful.  It is strange to see a boy out this early, so soon after the deepest part of the night, where boys smoke cigarettes on back streets and flash their knives like silver in waning moonlight.  

You climb up onto the familiar fire escape and rap your knuckles on his window.  He doesn’t stir, and you don’t let your breath rise in your chest, you clamp down on it - you knock again.  

He rolls over, squinting through the morning light to glare at you, and you grin back at him.  He nods his head as if to say, _it’s open_ , and you slide the window up on the sill, slipping into his room with light tread so that you don’t wake Mrs. Rogers.  

“The hell are you doing, Buck?” Steve asks you, and his tone’s accusing.  You can’t really blame him; it’s barely 7:30, but you couldn’t wait any longer at the orphanage.  The halls feel too cold without Steve beside you.  

“Just comin’ to wish my pal a happy birthday,” you say, shrugging, “but, ya know, if you’d rather I leave-”

Steve groans and rolls onto his back.  “Bucky, ya know, this coulda waited til’ later-”

“Nah, I got plans for us today.  I gotta get you out of bed early before someone else can steal you for the day - and so that we can get out before the parades start.” 

“Yeah?” Steve says, sitting up in bed, and you try not to watch the way his shoulders bow - they’re so sharp, so thin, and you imagine that they could crack underneath your palm.  “What do ya mean, you got plans?” 

“ _We_ got plans,” you correct, sitting down on the foot of his bed. “C’mon, get dressed, we’re goin’ out.  My treat.”  

“Buck, you don’t got that kind of money-”

“If I hear one more comment from you about money for the rest of the day, I’m gonna tell your ma about the one time Mr. Hern chewed you out down at the corner store-”

“Okay, okay!” Steve says hurriedly.  “Let me get some clothes on, jeez.  I just gotta tell my mom - where are we going?”

“’S a surprise,” you drawl, leaning back on your hands, letting your spine arch.  You think you watch his eyes follow the movement.  “We ain’t leaving Brooklyn, though, so don’t let her get too worried.”  

Steve nods, and in fifteen minutes he’s ready to go, brushing still-damp bangs off his forehead and buttoning his shirt.  You watch his thin fingers work and you swallow, look away.  There’s some things you can’t have.  

You take Steve to a real breakfast at a diner a half mile away, smiling as he looks over the menu with wide eyes, like he didn’t know it was possible to have so many options.  You suspect that’s probably true - you know you’ve only been eating oatmeal at the orphanage for the past six months or so, and it’s starting to get old.  

“Get whatever you want, Stevie.  I got some money saved up.”  

And he does.  Steve orders pancakes and eggs and you’ve never seen him eat so much in one sitting before, and it makes your heart ache because you want to see him eat that way all the time, and maybe then he could put some meat on his bony body.  

You take him to Coney Island, and you spend the day walking the beach as Steve sketches the dames out with their fellas, the children dashing in and out of the waves.  You dare him to ride the Cyclone with you, and he does it because he can’t ever turn down a dare, even though he throws up his whole lunch as soon as he gets off, glaring at you the whole time.  You rub his back as he gets sick, and for once, he doesn’t shrug off your hand.  

(You wonder what that means.) 

You watch night fall, the sun going back to its sleeping place over the western horizon, and you turn to Steve, who’s still sketching in the fast-fading light of dusk.  

“Ya ever want to go west?  Just - hop on a train, ride it as far as it’ll go?”  

Steve hums, glancing up at the curve of your neck, and you realize he’s drawing you.  It gives you a funny feeling in your stomach whenever he does that, sort of like worms, ‘cause you love having all his attention trained on you, like you’re the most important thing in the world.  

“Always wanted to see the Pacific,” Steve says, studying the angle of your jaw with eyes that you imagine can see right through your skin, down into your very soul, to the dark desires you hide away until you can think about them under cover of darkness, when the Devil comes out to play. 

“We’ll go someday,” you say, imaging it now - Steve Rogers, sketching the crests of the Pacific, stretching out all the way to the Orient.  “We can go to see that geyser folks are always talking about, or maybe even the Grand Canyon.  I’ve always wanted to see the Grand Canyon.”  

Steve smiles, not taking his eyes off the page.  “That sounds nice.”  

The air begins to rend with sounds like bombs, and you realize that folks are setting off fireworks.  “Look, Stevie,” you say, pointing towards Staten Island, where bright blooms of color dot the purple sky.  “Fireworks, just for your birthday.”  

Steve groans and rolls his eyes.  “I can’t believe I used to believe that when we were kids.  You’re a terrible person, Buck.”  

You laugh, but you wonder if there isn’t something to what he said.  

“Did ya have a good birthday?”

He looks up at you from under long eyelashes, and you feel your chest throb again, right where your heart is.  

“Yeah, Buck.  It was the best.”  

 

* * *

**August, 1935**

You stand outside a hotel room in Red Hook.  The streets smell like oysters, the walls of buildings covered in grime and washed out from the sea-breeze.  You hold a knife in your hand.  

“James.”  

You turn and see Mr. Fareldo standing there in front of you, gray suit crisp and clean, cufflinks white bone.  

“Are you ready, son?” 

You force yourself to nod, and your knuckles whiten on the hilt of the blade.  

“You get him to tell us where they’re keeping the cargo, and you’ll be rewarded.”  

You nod again.  

“This your first time, son?” he asks, and you watch him light a cigar between rows of teeth yellowed by nicotine and moonshine. 

“Yes, sir.”  

Mr. Fareldo places his hand on your left shoulder and squeezes it.  You blink slow, closing your eyes and hoping that when you open them, you’ll be back at home with Steve, sitting on couch cushions and watching him sketch while you read a pulp novel.  You hold that image in your mind, and you open your eyes.  

“Son, I’m gonna tell you something my Capo once told me.  Killing people is easy.  Making them suffer is an art.  Tell me, son - are you an artist?” 

Small hands moving in the light streaming from one lonely lamp in a corner.  Gentle strokes of charcoal, graphite on paper, thick weight notebooks under bird bones.  A maple tree in front of a church, an image in an alleyway as pavement leaches blood.  

You breathe in.  

“Yes sir.”  

“Then I think you’ve got a job to do.”  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, kudos/comments are deeply appreciated :) in addition, if you're interested at all in some of the history that's mentioned here (e.g. the gang wars, tammany hall, etc.) go look it up because it's all super fascinating!


	4. not even the rain

_(i do not know what it is about you that closes_  
_and opens; only something in me understands_  
_the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)  
_ _nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands_

_\- E.E. Cummings, “somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond”_

 

**February, 1936**

Winter lingers in the city, rolling flakes off the oceanside and chilling brittle bones.  You do not mind winter objectively, as an idea, nor do you mind the way snow looks as it falls, pressing down on sidewalks and cracked pavement roads.  You watch it slide off the tents at the camp down in Manhattan when you go in to see Mr. Fareldo, and and you savor the burning sensation of ice on your palms.  How the snow soaks up blood.  

You do not mind winter, but you mind _this_ , the way Steve falls ill without fail, and you wait to see if he will come out alive again.  

(You both do.  You are always waiting for the moment his luck will run out.) 

This year, you have money for medicine but he doesn’t improve, not right away.  There are hours spent at his side, placing cool rags against his forehead even though the wind outside is below freezing and it shudders the windowpanes as it rushes by.  

Sometimes his eyes slide open and glimmer with recognition.  They are more often clouded by fever, and sometimes you slide in to bed next to him, hold him and listen to his breathing to make sure he’s still with you.  

You pray, even though you know God has forsaken you.  

On the fifth day, Steve wakes and lets out a choked, “Bucky?” It is his first word in forty-seven hours.  

“Steve, Stevie,” you say, gasping with relief, grabbing the glass of water by his head and tipping some into his mouth.  “Hey, you with me?” 

“Yeah,” he wheezes, chest heaving for air.  “You haven’t been here the whole time, have you?” 

“‘Course not,” you say, shrugging, even though it’s not quite true.  

“Buck-” he starts, then stops, coughing so hard a little bit of blood dribbles out of his mouth onto the corner of his lip.  You draw him close to you, wipe away the evidence, try not to let him see how much you need him to survive.  

“Hey, hey, Stevie,” you say, casting desperately for something - anything - that you can talk about, just to keep his focus on you.  “Remember when we were kids, and you told me that story, about the man and his son?” 

Steve shakes his head, and you can see his lips twist where he tries to smile.  “Buck, gotta - gotta be more specific.”  He starts coughing again, and you rub his chest frantically.  

“The one where they were trapped on that island by the King, and they had to make wings-”

“Icarus,” Steve breathes.  “Icarus.  Why?”  

“It was referenced in one of my books,” you say.  “I couldn’t remember what it was called.”  

“He flew… too close to the sun,” Steve whispers.  “His wings melted, all ‘cause…” 

“‘Cause he didn’t listen, right?” you prompt when it sounds like he can’t talk any more.  

“Yeah,” Steve says, smiling.  “He wanted to touch the sun.” 

“Knew you’d know,” you say, watching as Steve’s eyes glaze back over, his moment of lucidity gone.  “He flew too close to the sun.”  

Steve feels like a sun under your palms, burning hot and red with sickness, the sky-blue of his eyes clouding and disappearing as they slip shut.  You look at his cheekbones, the hair that lies limp over his clammy forehead, and you wonder - why did you let yourself get so close?  You have always followed directions.  You’re good at it.  But for Steve - for Steve - 

You plummet to the sea, feathers flying loose around you, wax melting on your back and it burns your flesh.  You know what is coming, you know the fall, you know how it will feel when your skin hits the water.  You think you should feel regret, or sorrow, the terrible weight of it pinning you down, drowning your feathers in oil slicks on the water.  

You breathe in, let the ocean fill your lungs and the salt seep into your pores.  This is who you are - a wave, a dead boy who flew too high and too far.  You do not feel regret, as you sink into the inky recesses of the sea; only joy that you felt the sun kiss your skin, that you touched the sun, if only so briefly.  You freeze in the ocean, your lungs contracting and expanding around salt sea glass.  But you have known the taste of solar flares on your tongue; you know the burns on your shoulder blades; you know him.  

This is not the first time you have fallen.  

(It will not be the last.) 

 

* * *

**June, 1936**

“Look, pal, I’m gonna make this easy on you.  Either you tell me where the package is, or I cut your fucking finger off.  Can I make myself more clear?” 

“Vai all'inferno!” 

“No?” you say.  “You want to lose it?  Well, okay then.” 

You cut off his pinky.  Blood spurts over the back of your hand, onto your shirt.  “You wanna tell me where it is, Laverno?  Or do I gotta take your right one, too?” 

“Lo non vi dirò nulla.” 

“Well, alright then.” You take his right pinky.  He screams.  

“How ‘bout now?  Or have you forgotten that my employer knows just where your wife and kid live, huh?” 

“You lie.” 

You note the switch to English when you mention his family.  He does not risk being misunderstood.  

“Nah, buddy, why would I lie to you?  You think you could hide ‘em, all the way up in Queens?” 

“Not possible!” 

“Oh, but it is.”  You shove a bamboo splinter deeper under one of his fingernails.  “And you know that.  So why don’t you tell me - where the fuck is the package?” 

“Pier 42.” 

“Thank you, Mr. Laverno.  Pleasure doin’ business with you.”  

You tip your hat to the mass of sweat and blood on the ground.  You forget the smell of blood, you ignore the scent of fear in the air; it lingers on your clothes.  

Mr. Fareldo is waiting for you outside the hotel room, three men at his side.  

“Pier 42, sir.”  

“Moretti, take as many men as you need.”  

“Right away, sir.”  

“And you,” he says, pointing straight at you, “you have done well today, Foscari.”  He addresses you with your mother’s name, and you nod.  You do not want to think of what she’d say to you, spattered with blood for the boy you love.  

You’re not sure you care about what she’d think.  

 

* * *

**October, 1937**

“Look, Stevie, it’s no big deal! I’ve been saving up a bit, I always wanted to make sure you’d be able to pay for classes someday-”

“It ain’t _right_ , Buck!  You got no less a right to go to school, and you know that!  I wouldn’t’a passed half my classes if it wasn’t for you takin’ notes for me on the days I was sick.”  

“Steve, both of us can’t get what we want.  Ya know that, pal.”  

“God knows I’m useless anyways.”  

You think this is what it feels like - heartbreak.  A shattered ribcage, a plummeting heart.  Like Icarus hitting the waves.  

“You’re a lot of things, Stevie. But you ain’t that.  You ain’t that.   You got more talent in your little finger-”

“Talent doesn’t pay the bills, Buck.”  

“No, not right yet,” you say.  “But when the depression ends, it just might.”

“Buck-”

“Please go, Steve,” you say, interrupting whatever excuse Steve was about to make this time.  “Go for me.  You can be someone.  I know it.”  

Steve studies your face, watches the flicker of your eyes.  You know what he sees there, because sometimes you imagine that you see it too, every time you look at him.  When you look closer, it always melts away.  Like wings.  

“I wish you’d see that you could be someone, too.”  

You don’t know what to say to that.  

(You never did.)  

 

* * *

**March, 1938**

You have just turned twenty-one when the Nazis annex Austria.  

You listen to what they say on the radio, Steve crouched beside you next to the radiator, trying to rub color back into his white hands.  They talk about America’s western border, about the armies massing in the Orient, the growing fascist threat.  They talk about the factories that have lain dormant since the Great War; they hear the machines creak again.  

This is the engine of war, you think.  In this, a man’s blood could boil.  In this, he could become anything.  

(Even a monster, a fallen angel, one without wings.) 

 

* * *

**November, 1938**

“You gotta stop lettin’ this happen, Stevie.  One of these days you’re gonna lose a tooth… or break your jaw… or a rib-”

“Jeez, Buck, I get it,” Steve says, squirming under your touch.  He is sitting on the edge of the couch in your apartment, gripping the armrest until his fingers turn white as you dab gently at the cut on his cheek.  

“What the hell was it this time, punk?” you say, trying to lighten the mood.  You know he hates it when you take care of him.  Makes him feel weak.  “Someone say something rude to a dame?” 

“Nah,” Steve says, absently rubbing at his knuckles as you move away from his face to rinse the rag in warm water.  His hands are bruised, blood vessels popped in the valleys between his fingers.  “Haven’t you seen the papers today?” 

You haven’t.  You spent most of the morning hauling crates down at the docks - your honest job, but the only one you let Steve know about.  He doesn’t know that when you go out at night, you aren’t always going out to the dance halls.  

(He can’t ever know.)

Steve takes your silence as an answer.  “It was all over the _Times_ this morning - the Nazis sanctioned the organized destruction of Jewish businesses and temples.  Smashed in their windows, looted everything, burned other places.  Took Goebbels calling a halt to all of it for them to stop.” 

“So what does this have to do with you getting the hell beat out of yourself?” you prompt.  

Steve glares at you as you start to tend to his split lip.  “Burke was making comments about how they deserved it.  The Jews, I mean.  Kept saying that they were just scum, that they caused the depression and I couldn’t-”

“Hey, Steve,” you say, placing a hand on his shoulder as his breath starts to come in short, agitated pulls.  “You’re right, that ain’t right.  I know why you had to do it, but God, Stevie, just for _once_ , don’t go up against someone who’s twice your weight, okay?  I don’t know what I’d do if you-”

You stop, and Steve looks at you expectantly.  You close your mouth, because you can’t finish the sentence.  It would give too much away.  

“Next time I pick a fight, Buck, I’ll make sure you’re only a block away,” Steve says, and you know he’s joking to lighten the mood, but it works.  

You laugh.  “Well, I think that’s as good as it’s gonna get.  You’ll have a shiner tomorrow for sure.” 

Steve shrugs.  “Thanks, Buck,” he says, walking back towards your shared bedroom, probably to change his shirt.  

“Anything, pal,” you say, too quiet for him to hear.  

You think about what Steve said - that the Germans had raided Jewish shops, vandalized them, burned them.  There’s something looming in the east, you know, and you remember the invasion of Austria, the reclaiming of the Sudetenland that only happened last month.  You know aggression when you see it, because it is written in your blood, coded into your very bones.  You know violence, how blood looks when it spatters a wall, how much force it takes to punch a tooth from a man’s head.  You know aggression, and somehow - 

You know something more is coming.  Something beyond anything FDR could have predicted.  Beyond imagining.  

You are glad Steve will not be there to see it.  

 

* * *

**January, 1939**

“Bless me Father, for I have sinned.  It has been a long time since my last confession.”  

“James.  Have you come to repent?” 

“For once, Father, I think I have.”  

“Then the Lord will absolve you.  What have you come to confess?”  

“I’m not a good man, Father.  I got involved in something pretty bad a few years back to help pay for my friend’s medicine.

“Well, see, this thing I got involved in, it wasn’t ever supposed to get this bad.  I thought - I thought I could get out, but I guess… I guess you never really escape.  You see, Father, I’ve hurt people.”  

“Doing this job?” 

“Yes, Father.  I hurt people, and I get paid to do it.”  

“James, this sounds like-”

“I know what it sounds like. And it is.”  

“Have you-”

“No.  I ain’t killed anyone.  But if they asked me to, I’d have to.  They’d kill me, otherwise, and I can’t let that happen, Father.”  

“Are you here to atone for your sins?”  

“ _Yes_ , Father.  I’ve tortured men.  Cut ‘em.  Threatened them, their families, and I don’t even know what the cargo is half the time, but God-”

“Language, James.” 

“-Yes, Father.  But I gotta do it, ya see?  If I don’t, Steve-”

“James.  We have spoken of him before.”  

“Right.  Well, then you know why I can’t stop.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t regret it, Father.  I do.  It makes me sick every time I think about it.  I dream about them screaming, sometimes.  I wake up, and it’s like the shouts are still ringing in my ears.”  

“James-”

“What?” 

“Are these good men?” 

“I don’t know.  I guess not, but then again, I ain’t good either.”  

“Are you sorry that you have hurt these men?  Think carefully, my son.” 

“I don’t know.”  

“I see.”  

“Well, Father?  Can you forgive me or not?”

(“Do I deserve forgiveness?”)

(“Do I deserve him?”)

“No.”  

(“No.”)

 

* * *

**March, 1939**

It’s your birthday, and you are twenty-two years old.  

It has been raining all day, gray brick spattered with sweat and seawater down at the cargo bay leaving its briny imprint in the soles of your shoes.  Your clothes are ocean-stiff, and you blink droplets out of your eyes where they fall from your bangs.  

Steve is huddled next to the radiator in your apartment, working on a still-life assignment for his class.  He’s frowning intently at a single apple perched on the edge of the table, its sheen dulled in the late afternoon light peering through the two windows.  Raindrops race each other down the window-panes.  

“How’s it going?” you ask, pulling off your coat and hanging it on the nearly-detached peg by the door.  

“I can’t get the shading right,” Steve says, brows pulling together, lower lip sticking out just a bit.  “It’s hard, I can’t really figure out what shade of red to do and all, since I can’t rightly see red in the first place-”

“Put the pencils down, Stevie,” you say, snatching the apple up from the table to move it to the kitchen. “We’re going out tonight for my birthday, no excuses.  Find ourselves some nice dames to dance with, drink, have a good time.” 

“ _You’ll_ find dames to dance with,” Steve corrects, focused intently on finishing up line-work.  

“Can’t hurt to try,” you say, heading to shower.  “Ya never know, Stevie.  Maybe tonight’ll be the night.”  

And you know you should want that for him, you really should.  But something burns within your chest, a hot seed of jealousy, taking root within your soul and you know for sure that you don’t deserve Steve Rogers.  You have sinned more in your life than you care to recount, and you’d keep doing it, if only it kept him pure.  If only it kept him yours.  

 

#

 

You stumble home past one, too drunk to remember that you can’t lean on Steve for balance, and you almost crush him against the door frame.  Steve laughs, and you do too, because you can feel the whiskey pouring off your skin and Steve is drunk too and you are _happy_.  

You collapse on the couch until Steve pulls at your sleeve, telling you to stand up, and starts pulling the couch cushions onto the floor.  You grin and help him until you’ve created a sort of nest on the floor, huddling under blankets as you try to wash the chill from your bones.  It’s still raining outside, and you hear the drops hit the window like tiny fists on glass.  

“Thanks for goin’ out with me, Stevie,” you say, leaning into his side, letting your breath brush over his hair, amber with the wet and the cold.  

“I guess it wasn’t half-bad,” Steve says, looking up at you, and his lips twist just slightly into a crooked smile.  You think you feel your heart stop.  

“Well, I’m sure that dame - what was her name?”

“Suzanne,” Steve laughs.  

“Suzanne - seems like she had a good time, huh?”  You try to keep your voice light but that seed has grown into something venomous and beautiful, enticing and destructive.  Your veins run with poison and you try not to think about the way she looked in his arms as he twirled her in small circles, her dress fanning out behind her. 

“I guess,” Steve says, “but I gotta tell you, Buck - I wasn’t really lookin’ at her.”  

You watch as his tongue darts out to wet his lips, and you’re halfway there with just that motion.  You want your hands all over his small waist, to make him forget the feeling of a dame in his arms, of her small fingers on his hipbones.  Your hand is halfway to his face before you know what you’re doing, and you brush a lock of golden hair from his eyes, where it was threatening to drip down onto his nose.  You open your mouth to say something, some great comeback, but all that comes out is, “Well, who were you lookin’ at then?  Better not have been my dame, Steve.”  

“Nah, it wasn’t,” he says, and you know you’re not imagining the way he moves near to you.  His lips are so close to yours, you can feel his warm breath wash across your mouth.  “I was lookin’ at her partner.”  

You don’t know who starts the kiss, but you know you yield to his hands, you let yourself fall back against the cushions and surrender yourself to his touch.  His fingers caress your body like a spring storm, like raindrops on glass.  He takes you apart, and you are helpless under his hands.  

 

#

 

The next morning, you wake up on the floor.  

He is gone. 

(You think, this is what it must have felt like.  You did not know the impact of salt water on burned flesh until today, you did not know how it felt to fall without renown, wings torn and shattered and withered.)

(You had not known, you think, because you had not truly known what it meant to fly.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i always appreciate love in the form of kudos/nice positive comments and i will also accept "keira youre a terrible person and i hate you" as a form of love so really anything works. i just finished finals so i should be able to focus on this more (yay!) and tbh im liking the way its turning out. weed is great for many things, folks, and one of those is plot inspiration. thanks for reading! 
> 
> also history!porn but w/e


	5. within us

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fuckin hell ok i lied i totally lied its gonna be eight chapters since im shit and i cant write anything thats reasonably short ok 
> 
> aka this is an unplanned chapter but shit was getting way too long and so here u fuckin go

_You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful ministers,_  
_We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate henceforward,_  
_Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves from us,_  
_We use you, and do not cast you aside—we plant you permanently within us,_  
_We fathom you not—we love you—there is perfection in you also,_  
_You furnish your parts toward eternity,  
_ _Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul._

_\- Walt Whitman, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”_

 

**April, 1939**

You forget what it is like.  

To have your body be fully yours.  

You remember how his lips felt on your sternum, on your ribcage.  On your hipbones, on your cock.  

You remember wheat he looked like as he pulled away, red and flushed and glowing, but you cannot remember him returning.  

(He did not.)  

You wonder what it was like, before you gave yourself to him, whiskey running like the Styx through your veins. If you ever would have known his taste on your tongue.  

It does not matter, you think, because you are beyond his reach.  You are fire, you are air.  You cannot be tamed.  

(He has tamed you.  Steve is water, he is earth.  He knows how to tear you down.)  

You breathe in.  You press onward, in this body that is not yours, because you can still feel a part of it somewhere else.  You recognize it every time you look into sea-glass eyes, every time you listen to waves crash against the Brooklyn waterfront.  You hear his consonants whispered in the spring rain.  

He never mentions it, so neither do you.  Sometimes you think you catch him looking.

(You know you’re imagining it.)

You forget the sound of your name on his tongue.  It is too painful.  

He is not yours.  

 

* * *

**September, 1939**

The Nazis invade Poland.  Two days later, the Allied forces declare war on Germany.  

Steve talks about how it’s only a matter of time before America enters the war, before he can do his part.  You think a miracle must have to happen for him to be accepted because he’s a color blind asthmatic with a heart condition and flat feet but he’s determined that if the US enters the war, it’s his duty to serve.  

There ain’t nothing you can say to stop him from pledging his life to his country.  

You wonder if it makes you a bad person, that you don’t want him getting in the way.  That you would never want to see him overseas, in the trenches and the mud and the cold.  You wonder if you’d pledge yourself to serve.  

(If he asked it of you-)

How could you leave him behind?  All he has is a paper route, ‘cause he’s too sick to work anything else.  Even now, with your work, you can barely pay the rent on time, the bills that somehow keep stacking up on the corner table.  You scrape blood from beneath your fingernails into the kitchen sink and wonder if his pride in you is worth leaving him alone.  

If he asked it of you, you would go.  If he asked it of you, you would make the ultimate sacrifice.

(Not for your nation.  For him.  Always for him.)  

 

* * *

**March, 1940**

Steve gets a job in a factory that’s making bullets for the Allies, and you wrap his hands when they get cut up by metal and machines.  His cough gets worse and one night his chest heaves so hard he collapses.  You catch him just before he hits the ground, drag him over to the window so that he can suck in cold air.  It’s raining, and droplets splash your back as you perch on the sill so you can support him. 

“Sorry, Buck, sorry - it’s fine, I’m all right,” Steve says, but it’s through wheezes and you know he’s lying.  

“Steve, just - let me help-”

Steve shakes his head even as his breath starts to catch, and you rush to the cabinet above the sink where you keep his nebulizer.  You saved up your spare wages for months in order to afford it, but it’s helped Steve so much you can’t bring yourself to care.  

“Buck-” Steve chokes, hand grasping blindly for the nebulizer, and you help him slide it over his nose and mouth so that he can breathe clean, medicinal air.  

“It’s all right, Stevie, don’t gotta worry about it,” you say, keeping one hand on his shoulder and the other, clinical. 

Steve nods, trying to blink away tears that have welled in his eyes from the attack.  “I’m sorry-”

“Don’t apologize,” you say, firm, and go to fix dinner.  You look back at Steve, who’s now hunched over his sketchbook, and wonder why he took that damn job in the first place.  His brow furrows as he begins to shade something in, long sweeping strokes of a pencil that you bought for him three weeks ago, and your heart throbs because you’ve always wanted to ask him what it was he always drew.  Steve only shows you some of his drawings, and those are only the ones of things like the Brooklyn Bridge, the ferris wheel at Coney Island, the train.  The pictures are incredible; you know that even without an artists’ eye.  But some part of you knows that he doesn’t labor over those sketches like he does on others.  

(You wonder, sometimes, if he’s drawing you.  You can never bring yourself to ask.) 

For your birthday a few weeks ago, he’d given you a sketch of the two of you sitting on the beach that first time you dragged him out to Coney Island way back when he had just turned seventeen.  Looking at that sketch, you can remember the way the Atlantic felt against your toes, how the salt carried on the air and settled on your tongue, on your skin.  Steve drew you laughing, and you aren’t sure your face has ever looked like that - so innocent, carefree, full of warmth.  Probably not then.  Certainly not now.  You keep that drawing underneath your pillow, and sometimes when you’re sure Steve’s asleep, you’ll slip it out and look at it in the shafts of light that peek through your single window from the neighboring building.  You’ll look at the way he drew the strong lines of your jaw, how he drew you with one arm wrapped around his shoulders.  You look, and you try not to look too hard, because you’re afraid of what you might find.  

 

#

 

That night, you enter the bedroom to find Steve asleep on your bed, his nose pressed hard into your pillow.  You guess he was so exhausted he didn’t realize his mistake, and you decide that you don’t care.  You slip into bed next to him, only noticing his shivering as you hit the mattress.  Pulling him against your chest, you draw the blankets up farther, nestling your nose into the crook of his neck.  

You’re not sure if this crosses a line that isn’t meant to be crossed (although, what would be the damage, now?) or if you can pass it off for concerned heat conservation in the morning.  

You decide that it probably doesn’t matter - two fellas aren’t supposed to do things like this.   

(You do it anyways.)   

 

* * *

**June, 1940**

Sarah Rogers dies in her sleep.  

The doctor says it was tuberculosis and you think it’s sad, how she and Steve’s dad both died serving their country, in a way, both in the line of duty.  His dad from mustard gas, her from the disease she worked so hard to treat.  

Steve won’t let you walk with him to the burial, and so you stand a ways off and watch as he cries when his ma is lowered into the ground.  You want nothing more than to hold him close to you, kiss the salt away from his cheekbones.  Tell him everything is gonna be all right, and you know it will be ‘cause you’ve gone through it.  Because you’ve seen more death than you want to admit.  

You don’t.  You leave when as he’s still standing there and head back to his ma’s place; you wait for him.  

He says he wants to be alone and you know how hard it is to go through your dead ma’s things, so you don’t take no for an answer.  You try to convince him to come home.  

You say, “I’m with you ’til the end of the line, pal.” 

You wonder if it’s too much, if you’ve showed all your cards and you’re gambling on show and spite.  He smiles.  

Your heart is breaking, or perhaps it has already broken.  Maybe this is what it feels like, to have nothing left.  

All you have is each other. 

(Even when you had nothing, you had Steve.  It’s always been that way.)

 

* * *

**September, 1940**

“C’mon, Buck, I’m taking you out.”  

You startle out of your half-doze, almost certain that you imagined Steve’s voice saying those words.  No, it must’ve been - 

“C’mon, you mook, get off the couch,” Steve says, prodding your leg with his foot, and you glance up, instantly suspicious.  

“Why d’you wanna go out?  You _never_ want to go out.”  

Steve shrugs, grinning small and stupid and all you want to do is gather him into your arms and kiss him.  You think he’d fit so well there, his body concave against your own.  “What, a guy can’t want to go out and dance a bit, have a little fun?”  

“Yeah,” you say cautiously.  “But you never do.  What’s gotten into you?” 

“Got a promotion,” Steve says, shy and quiet but your heart just about jumps from your chest.  

“You’re kidding!  Of course we’re goin’ out then!” you say, leaping up from the sofa and clapping him on the shoulder.  “Where do you wanna go?  Malley’s, The Bridge-”

“Actually, I was thinkin’ we could head down to the south end of Park Slope, there’s a place there I’ve heard is pretty good.  I’d like to try something new, you know?” 

“Sure, whatever,” you say, laughing and pulling on your coat.  

He walks close to you as you meander down streets that smell of brine and smoke and fish, that distinctive scent of night and of the rain that will come tomorrow.  You stand on Steve’s right side to light a cigarette because the wind is blowing in that direction and he smiles at you for thinking of him like that; you want to tell him it’s nothing, that you would quit smoking if he asked it of you, but you don’t know the words.  

Steve tells you about the job, how he’s now working as a shift supervisor, how there’s this dame at his work whose eyes shine like amber and whose hair is shiny and black as tar.  You tell him to ask her out but he just shrugs and says, “Ain’t no harm in looking, Buck, but I don’t think she’d say yes to me.”  

“Someday, you’re gonna find someone that appreciates you for who you are, Stevie,” you say, and you’d like to think your voice doesn’t sound wistful, but it isn’t even convincing to you.  “It just hasn’t happened yet.”  

Steve gets a weird look in his eyes, and just says, “Yeah.  Guess so.”  

Steve stops in front of an unmarked door and you grin.  “Stevie, taking me to a good old-fashioned speakeasy?” 

“Not exactly,” he says, lips twisting and eyes lit like a roman candle.  

“Well, what is it then?” you ask as Steve opens the door into a long hallway, lit with gas lamps instead of electricity.  

“Something different,” Steve says, shrugging, nodding to the bouncer, who moves aside to let you through the door and - 

 _Oh_.  

The room smells like cheap whiskey and sweat and musk, and you watch as two fellas stroll past you, one’s arm around the other’s waist.  To your left there are two men dancing, one of them dressed up like a doll, her hair swinging out behind her and dress twirling around her narrow hips.  Your mouth goes dry. 

“Stevie, this isn’t-”

“It’s all right, Buck,” Steve says, worry lacing his features. “Just - one drink, okay?  This place is safe, I swear, it’s under the Italians’ protection.”  

And you know that, you know it because you hear sometimes about the queer bars in Brooklyn that are allowed to exist because they give the Family a good payout, how the _finocchio_ do good business. You never thought it’d be like this - men who looked as masculine as you and Steve, kissing like a dame and her fella over in a corner, eight more leaning up against the bar, one with a military crew cut and a build like an army boy.  

You follow Steve to the bar anyways, adrenaline coursing like a drug through your veins because you _don’t talk about this_ , about what happened on your birthday last year, you don’t talk about it and that’s okay, it’s- 

“Two whiskeys, please, straight,” Steve says, and turns to look at you.  “Make them doubles.”  

The man behind the bar (who’s so attractive your mouth starts to water on instinct) turns to pour your drinks, and your eyes return to Steve.  Steve, who’s just standing there like this is any other dance hall, like he’s been in places like this a thousand times before.  Steve, whose eyes are burning and raking over you with a heat you’ve only ever felt once before in your life.  

You want to run.  You want to burn.  

The bartender sets two glasses on the counter, and Steve sets a dollar down on the counter.  He drains his glass and strolls out onto the dance floor, casual as any night at any dance hall.  Maybe even more - you’ve never seen him look this way around a dame.  A man presses into him within seconds, handling Steve like a dame and you feel jealousy like a sickness within you, freezing over your veins.  Steve isn’t looking at you or his partner, just training his eyes on his shoes to make sure he doesn’t stumble because he’s got two left feet.  The man whispers something in his ear and Steve starts laughing, shaking his head just a bit, and you would kill someone to know what he’s saying.  It’s too much, to stand and watch Steve as his dance partner carefully moves him closer to the wall, towards a table where they’ll talk and kiss and Steve will-  

And what is there left to do? He knows, and you know, and you’re in a place like this, and Steve is dancing with a stranger and their arms are not your arms and you watch as the man leans in close again, like he’s gonna steal a kiss from Steve’s lips - 

You are moving onto the dance floor before you know what you’re doing, and you keep going because somehow you think you managed to lose control of your legs along the way.  You’d only had potatoes for dinner so the whiskey has gone straight to your head, suffusing your body in warmth, burning in your stomach and your throat.  You remove the other man’s hands from Steve’s waist and ignore his indignant shout because Steve goes willingly, pliantly, like he wanted you to do that.  Like he was dancing with a stranger on purpose, just to aggravate you, just to see what you would do.  

Steve can’t dance worth a damn but you don’t even care, because it’s the best goddamn dance you’ve ever had.  

The song ends, and you retreat back to a table while Steve grabs more drinks.  

“Steve, I-” you start when he returns, but he shakes his head.  

“No.  It’s - tell me you don’t want this, Bucky,” he says, looking at you with those bottomless eyes that can sink through your skin.  “Tell me you don’t want this, and we can go.  We never have to talk about it again.”  

“But you left,” you say, because you can’t get past that.  Steve was gone that morning, a cold place on the couch cushions where his body had been warm next to yours.  “You were gone.”  

“And that’s the worst thing I think I’ve ever done,” Steve says, staring at his tumbler.  “I was scared, Buck.  I’d been thinking about it for so long that when it happened, well - I’d taken advantage of-”

“Don’t you dare talk like that.”  

“Well, I thought that since you’d been drunk, maybe-”

“Maybe when I woke up, I wouldn’t want you anymore?” 

“Yeah.  Something like that.”  

“So you left.”  

Steve blinks.  “I’m - I’m so sorry, Buck.  I swear, I’ll make it up to you.  Whatever you want.  I just - I think you feel the same way, and I don’t wanna keep pretending it’s not what I want.  Whenever we go out on doubles, it’s - I don’t even see the dame I’m with.  She could be as beautiful as a movie star and still wouldn’t matter, ‘cause my eyes just keep coming back to you and how damn good you look in a tie.”  

“Don’t do this,” you whisper, because it’s too good.   

“Do what?  I won’t keep telling lies, Buck.  I can’t live like that.  I don’t want to find anyone else.  I don’t want some dame to look at me and finally realize what she’s been missing all along, because you saw that all a hell of a long time ago.”  

You open your mouth to speak, but the words stick in your throat.  

“Steve-”

“Tell me I’m wrong, Buck.”  

You look at the way his lips reflect the dull light of the dance hall, how his pupils are blown wide and his hair is slightly tousled from the wind and the dancing.  His thin jacket and how his shirt clings to his fragile bones.  The defiant jut of his chin.  You want to touch every part of him, feel his skin against your lips and tongue, inscribe your name in his flesh.  

You lean across the table and kiss him.  His lips respond like fire to oxygen and you are breathing for the first time in over a year, because he had taken that from you, that part of you that lies deep within his saltwater eyes, inside his storm-soul.  His hand trails up your side to grip the back of your neck and you moan, because you finally know what it must have felt like, for Icarus, as he fell into the sea.  

A burning.  A fall.  

Peace.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> love me? kudos/comments would be fanfuckingtastic, as would be general crying about marvel on my tumblr at amerrichavez <333 love ya all 
> 
> also the entirety of that walt whitman poem is pure fucking gold and finding one passage to post was literally hellish just go read it yes? yes


	6. to strive, to seek, to find (and not to yield)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> would you believe me if i told you this chapter just sort of happened and i didnt even mean to write a transition chapter? 
> 
> basically this is history porn im not even sorry

_Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'_  
_We are not now that strength which in old days_  
_Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,--_  
_One equal temper of heroic hearts,_  
_Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will  
_ _To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield._

_\- Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses”_

  **January, 1941**

And so, despite everything, life continues as it always has.  The papers spill more stories each day of the exploits of war, about Africa and Hungary and Romania and you read them with a wary eye.  The air raids in London are growing ever worse and you begin to face a fact that had dawned on you long ago - that America will enter this war, and that when she does, you must be prepared to fight.  

Steve has reached the same conclusion, you think, as you see him trying to do push-ups and crunches on the small rug by your couch, and your heart aches for him.  You don’t know how you could ever give him up, now that you have him.  Now that he’s yours.  

(Now that you’re his.) 

Life continues as it always has, and so does crime, because crime does not stop for war, and drugs are flowing into and out of the city like water through cupped hands.  You make increasingly far-fetched excuses as to why you go out at night, and you know that Steve suspects something, and it breaks your heart because he trusts you enough not to ask.  If he knew, it could never be the same.  

Roosevelt is reelected and the Family doesn’t mind because the politicians are in their pocket and any sort of party shift would upset their web of influence.  Someone deep inside the Family has made you untouchable, has promoted you and so your life is safe, but you cannot help but wonder if it would still be so, were they to know about Steve.  

You are already a soldier.  In a way, you have been since you were fifteen.  

(In a way, you have been since you were seven.) 

Soldiers are meant for service, and so that is what you will do, if the time comes.  That is who you will become.  

 

* * *

**June, 1941**

You’re huddled around your tiny radio, you and Steve, and he shushes you because you don’t get what the big deal is about.  So it’s a Prime Minister, so what, you’ve heard everything politicians have ever said and none of it’s left you impressed.  You’ve heard their lies.  You’ve heard them, and you’ve believed them.  

(You have been used by them.) 

“Shut up, Buck, it’s-”

_“And now, a special broadcast from Great Britain, where the Prime Minister addressed the House and, it seems, called again for the United States to enter the fight against the Axis powers.”_

A new voice comes on the radio now, and you are entranced.  

_“I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of His Majesty's Government-every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation. The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength. Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”_

You look over at Steve, and he’s crying, tears streaming softly down his cheeks, eyes bright with something that looks dangerously like resolve.  You brush your hand across his cheek to swipe away his tears, and when he does the same for you, you realize that you’re crying, too. 

“I want to fight, Buck.  I want-”

“Shh, Steve,” you say, pulling him close against your chest, letting his tears seep into the cotton of your shirt.  “I know.  I know.”  

And you do know, now.  You know that you will never be able to stop Steve from throwing his life into a cause he finds just, that you will never be able to stop Steve from doing anything, because he fights for what is right, for what is good.  

But you - you know that it does not matter the cause, or the cost.  If it is your blood that spills, or your enemy’s, or an innocent’s.  You would do anything, fight any battle.  

Steve’s morals are binary: there is just, and there is unjust.  The just is not always good, but then, justice does not have to be good.  

You have a moral compass, you think, but it does not point towards good or evil.  

It calls you home.  

 

* * *

**Sunday, December 7, 1941**

You and Steve are walking home from Mass, and you are still hungover from the night before, the late morning light too bright against your fragile retinas.  You are grumbling at Steve for dragging you to church and he’s unrepentantly grinning, and you think he probably just made you go because you fell asleep before you could get him off last night.  It isn’t your fault, you reason, that Steve is so clever with his fingers, so you think Mass as punishment is categorically unfair.  

You are walking home from Mass when you hear it, like a low rumbling, a shrill sound in the center of your ear.  You turn to Steve and raise an eyebrow, but he looks just as confused as you, until - 

You are passing by a window when you hear it.  Sobbing from inside, and a tinny voice on the radio, saying - saying - 

_“We have just received word that Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese Empire this morning at 7:38 AM. This unprecedented attack-”_

Steve continues to walk, not having heard, but you have frozen, as if a glacier has swept over your skin and left you immobile, carving out a cirque in a mountain with no control as to its shape or its depth.  

And this is it, you think.  This is what was always coming, looming in the Pacific, a dark terror that will take another generation, that will consume the nation, that will mean the thing most precious to you being placed, invariably, in harm’s way.  

“Bucky?  Hey, what’s wrong?” Steve asks, anxiously squeezing your arm, but you can only stare at him, eyes mute with horror.  

Hundreds of Americans must have lost their lives this morning, and yet you can only bring yourself to think of one.  

(What does that make you?) 

Steve hears it, then, pauses to listen and his breath starts to hitch, hand clenching until you are certain it will leave bruises on your forearm.  You don’t care.  How could you? 

“Bucky-” Steve starts, then stops, like he can’t believe what he’s hearing.  

“Let’s go home,” you say, finally finding your voice again.  “We’ve got our own radio, come on.”  

Steve turns around at your words, back towards your apartment, and starts walking so fast it could almost be considered a run.  

You follow.  

 

* * *

**Monday, December 8, 1941**

You are planted by the radio well into the night and through the next morning because they’ve given both you and Steve that Monday off work, to grieve and recover.  You listen live as Roosevelt speaks to Congress, and you hear the words you have been dreading since the Nazis invaded Poland two years ago:  

_“Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan._

_The United States was at peace with that nation, and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific. Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American island of Oahu, the Japanese ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our secretary of state a formal reply to a recent American message. While this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or armed attack._

_It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time the Japanese government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace._

_The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition, American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu._

_Yesterday the Japanese government also launched as attack against Malaya._

_Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong._

_Last night Japanese forces attacked Guam._

_Last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands._

_Last night Japanese forces attacked Wake Island._

_And this morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island._

_Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation._

_As commander in chief of the Army and Navy I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense._

_Always will we remember the character of the onslaught against us._

_No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory._

_I believe I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again._

_Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger._

_With confidence in our armed forces - with the unbounding determination of our people - we will gain the inevitable triumph - so help us God._

_I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, Dec. 7, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire.”_

Steve looks at you, and you know what he’s going to say before the words have left his mouth.  

“I’m gonna enlist.”  

You take a deep breath, and say what you’ve always known you would say, when this day came.  

“Not without me, you’re not.  I’m with ya, pal.  ’Til the end of the line.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so... now it's gonna be nine chapters? ok? god it just didnt work thematically to attach this to either the previous chapter or the next one ok but the next one should be posted REAL SOON I PROMISE IM SO SORRY IM TRASH
> 
> also im totally ignoring the canon thing that they heard about america entering the war in art class ok like honestly? they would've known from the second the japanese attacked pearl harbor that america was going to war, and then roosevelt's speech would've basically sealed the deal there
> 
> also just fun fact the only reason the pearl harbor dates are specific is because my eighth grade history teacher made us memorize exactly one date, and told us it was the only date in history we would ever need to know: Sunday, December 7, 1941. there ya go, Mr. Henry. just for you.


	7. the sun in flight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well this also got too fucking complicated thematically fucking shit im an awful human being

_Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,_  
_And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,_  
_Do not go gentle into that good night._  
  
_Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight_  
_Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,  
_ _Rage, rage against the dying of the light._

_\- Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”_

 

**March, 1942**

“I’ll write you every damn day if you want, I swear.  And Jesus, if you go to one more recruitment center while I’m gone, I’ll kill you myself, Stevie.  You’re gonna get caught doing that, you know.”  

Steve’s lips push out in the barest hint of a pout.  “They ain’t gonna catch me, Buck.  Besides, one of them’s gotta say yes.”  

You level your gaze at him.  “You stay out of trouble, okay?  Don’t pick any fights while I’m gone, else there’ll be no one to stitch you up.” 

“Sure, Buck,” Steve says, and you think you see tears welling in his eyes.  You’d decided to have your official goodbye at home, and then walk to the station together like regular pals, so that Steve could see you off.  

“Hey, none of that,” you say, brushing his cheeks with your thumbs.  His face fits so perfectly in your hands, and you wish you never had to leave.  “It’s just Basic training.  It’ll take six weeks, and then I’ll be home, all right?  I promise to come back before I head out to AIT.”  

“You’d goddamn better.”  

“You want the nuns hearing you talk like that?”  

“Ain’t no nuns here, Buck,” Steve says, leaning in to kiss you.  It has a desperate edge to it, and you shiver at the feel of his teeth on your lips, but you can’t stay in the apartment forever, as much as you’d like to.  

“Come on, you punk, let’s get going or I’m gonna miss my train.”  

Steve doesn’t look like he’d care much if you did, but he follows you out the door all the same.  

“I’m having them send all my wages home, but if you need anything you just write me, okay?  I’ll figure something out.”  

“Thanks, but I’ll be fine,” Steve says, smiling, but the expression looks pained.  “Don’t do anything stupid, like jump on top of a grenade or anything, okay?” 

“Now why would I do that?” you ask, laughing, slinging an arm around his shoulders in a gesture you must’ve made a million times before.  

“Well, Buck, I think we both know who’s the brains of this relationship.”  

“So that’s how it is?” 

“That’s how it is.”  

You’re on the platform, now, and March mist has gathered on the uneven cobblestones of the walkways.  Steve’s features look softened, almost, in the morning light, the clouds too thick to show the sun.  You wish you could pull him into your arms like some of the fellas are doing with their dames.  You wish things were different.  

“I’ll be home soon, all right?  It’ll feel like no time at all.  Bet you’ll get so much art done while I’m gone.”  

Steve shakes his head and smiles at the ground.  “Maybe.  Oh,” he says, pulling an envelope from his breast pocket.  “This is for you.  Don’t open it till you’re alone, though, all right?  Just - something to remember me by.”  

“Like I’d ever forget you,” you say, but you take the envelope anyway, folding it carefully into your jacket, far away from your paperwork.  

“Buck-” Steve says as you turn to go.  There’s something in his voice, some desperate urgency, and you wait.  

“Yeah?” 

“Be safe out there, you jerk,” Steve says, and holds out his hand for you to shake.  You take it, and it’s not enough and you know that wasn’t what he meant to say but it’s too late now.  You’re on the train before you know what’s happening, and Steve stands on the platform, not waving, just looking at your compartment, and his face is written with disappointment, longing, sadness.  

You feel your heart rend itself as you pull out of the station.  A part of it stays behind, with Steve, as you race across Brooklyn for Manhattan, where you’ll catch your main transport.  

Your chest, which has felt whole for over a year, feels hollow again.  

(You have left your soul behind.) 

 

* * *

**April, 1942**

_Hey Stevie,_

_Just wanted to write you to let you know that I’m doing all right.  The guys here are okay, but the drill Sergeants are mean motherfuckers.  Wish I could tell you more about training, but they look over all my mail and I’m not sure what they’d redact._

_But, you know, I miss you.  I hope you’re doing okay, and are eating more than just boiled potatoes, because those aren’t that good for you.  They feed us okay here, I guess, but we get spam more often than not, and you know how much I hate that.  Guess I gotta get used to it, what with field rations being how they are and all._

_They’ve picked me out for my shooting skills.  Big surprise, huh?  They say with some training up, I could be a pretty good sniper.  I guess that’s what I’ll be doing for AIT, cause I’m not very good at much else.  Well, besides picking fights with guys twice my size, but I guess I’ve got you to thank for that._

_There’s some rumors flying around the camp that the Nazis are into some bad shit in Eastern Europe, looking for Jews.  Sounds like they’re doing the same thing we are to the Japs, but I guess it’s probably worse, since they’re the Nazis.  The guys don’t seem all that bothered by what we’re doing to them, Steve.  I know if you were here, you could set them straight.  I don’t have a way with words like you do.  Just a way with my fists._

_I miss you. I hope you’re doing well.  Sorry if any of this letter gets redacted or something, I tried my best to make it safe for ya._

_Have you gotten a check yet?  The army should’ve sent you one by now.  Let me know if you need more money._

~~ _God, I feel bad sending you home with money like a_ ~~

_I miss our apartment, and the way the radiator groans at night.  I miss that ugly quilt we got at Mrs. Peterson’s estate sale._ _I miss the way you sketch late at night when you think I’m asleep_ _.  Fuck, I even miss the goddamn potatoes._

~~ _I miss how your skin feels against_ ~~

~~ _Your lips_ ~~

~~ _You don’t even know_ ~~

~~ _How am I gonna even make it overseas, not knowing when I’m gonna_ ~~

_Fuck, Steve.  I miss you.  Wish you were here every day, but then I guess you’d probably do something heroic like punch Nichols in the face when he talks shit about the Japs.  I can’t wait to be home so I can see you again before I go off for my second round of training._

_And - thanks for the drawing._ _Even though you don’t see yourself the way I do._ _Gets me thinking about your art career.  I bet you’d be good at drawing those posters for the war effort, have you ever thought of trying to get a job doing that?_

~~ _You’re gorgeous_ ~~

~~ _I love you_ ~~

_I miss you.  See you again in a few weeks.  Counting down the days til then._

 

_Yours always,_

_Bucky_

 

* * *

**August, 1942**

You take Steve to the Expo the night before you ship out for Europe.  You’ve been made a sergeant in the army, a pretty great honor for an enlisted recruit who can’t do much more than shoot a gun and cut up people without killing them.  

(The Family wished you well, overseas.  Fareldo reminded you that there was always a place for you when you came back.)  

Steve grumbles about the girls you’ve found to take dancing that night, because he doesn’t want you to hide but you know how it looks.  You’ve managed to convince your whole neighborhood that you’ve fucked half of Brooklyn, mostly ‘cause nobody would ever believe Stevie if he said the same thing.  

You leave Steve at the recruitment center and go to see the girls off; you hate having to send them home early but you don’t know what else to do when Steve isn’t willing or able to play his part.  It sickens you, how determined he is to serve.  You think about basic, about how even ten push-ups would be too much for Steve’s lungs, and the thought of not being there with him makes you want to die.  You hate being anywhere that you can’t protect him.  

When you get back to the recruitment center he’s not waiting outside, which means he’s still in there getting rejected on the basis of his countless medical conditions.  You’ll be lucky if he doesn’t get arrested.  

He walks out a half hour later, face slack and blank and you greet him with a punch on his shoulder that jerks his gaze up to you.  

“How’d it go?” 

Steve shrugs.  “Don’t wanna talk about it.”  

“How ‘bout we go home and finish off that bourbon I got stashed?  Can’t leave it alone with you while I’m gone, you’ll drink the whole thing,” you say, teasing, because you know how he gets after these incidents and you need to see him happy one last time before you leave.  

(It could be the last time you ever see him.  You have a feeling that it will be.)  

“Yeah, okay,” Steve says, shifting anxiously but letting you lead him out of the crowd, through the expo, down to the train that would take you back home.  Steve looks straight ahead on the ride back, frail body swaying into yours at every bend in the track.  

“Hey, pal,” you say as the train screeches again, pulling up to a stop that is not yours.  “Everything all right? You don’t look great.” 

“I’m fine, Buck,” he snaps, then seems to visibly rethink, and smiles at you.  “Really.  Let’s just - only good things tonight, okay?  Don’t wanna spoil your last night.”  

You grin back.  “Okay.”  

When you get home, Steve pulls you into bed.  His fingers press bruises into your sides, as if to say, _remember me_ , and his lips write sin into your flesh.  You whisper his name like a prayer, like a psalm sung to dark corners of the night, rejecting your religion.  

He whispers back, and you wonder what you’ve done.  He draws blood on your clavicle, crimson showering white skin.  You are Pentecost - a fire in your skin, searing white feathers; they fall and smolder ash.  His lips are communion to your tongue, his sweat a baptism.  

You are reborn.  

 

* * *

**December, 1942**

“Hey, Barnes!  You’ve got a letter!” 

You lift your head from where you’ve just settled on your cot - under about three too few layers of blankets - and beckon Dugan over.  “Bring it over?” 

“From a dame?” he asks, handing you the letter.  You look at the writing and shake your head - you know that scrawl.  “Nah.  From my best friend.”  

(From your best fella, but you can’t really say that.  They’d lock you up for good this time - no Family to protect you, not now.)

You open the letter and smile when a sketch falls out of the envelope.  It’s a drawing of you, dressed in army greens like you were the night before you shipped out.  Your hat is tipped slightly to one side, lips twisted into a grin, and you think Steve makes you look so much more handsome than you really are.  Smiling, you tuck the drawing away next to the self-portrait Steve gave you before basic, which rests in your breast pocket.  You keep his image close to your heart, and you look at it sometimes in the wan light of a fire in the brush, or flickering electric lamps at the barracks.  

Glancing around to make sure nobody is watching you, you unfold the letter.  

_Bucky,_

_I hope this finds you okay.  It hasn’t been too long since you left, but I guess I just wanted to write to you and let you know that I’m doing all right.  I got a new job, actually - would you believe me if I said it was government and top-secret?  Probably not.  (Come on, US Army, please don’t redact that one.)  Anyways, please don’t be alarmed that this letter is postmarked from New Jersey.  I have a very good business-related reason for being here, and I solemnly swear to you that I would never betray New York and come here of my own free will._

_The job’s sort of a trial-period thing right now, so I’m not sure if it’ll keep up or where they’ll move me to next, if the job goes well.  I’ll keep you updated on that, too.  Just rest assured that I am safe, that I can definitely pay for my medicine, and that you don’t gotta keep sending your pay home, okay?  Spend it on something nice, like booze or girls in the villages. (Just kidding about that last one, army postal services.  Neither you nor I want one of America’s finest dying from sex.)_

_New Jersey really is terrible, though.  Promise._

_I enclosed a rough sketch I did the other night.  I was thinking of you.  Thought maybe you’d like it._

_I guess there’s not much to say that won’t be redacted.  I’m sorry I can’t tell you more, Buck, but I’m being safe and I have food so I figured you can’t get too upset.  Don’t go winning the war without me, but make sure that you’re taking care of yourself.  I know how you like to jump in front of fists for scrawny little shits, but don’t be doing that to any of the boys over there, okay?  You gotta come home.  I know you will._

_I miss you, Buck.  Take care, and if you get killed, walk it off._

_Best,_

_Steve_

You know the grin across your face is stupid, and the soldier in the bunk next to you (you’ve already forgotten his name, even though he introduced himself to you about ten minutes ago) looks over and smiles.  

“From your girl back home?” he asks.  “Mine sent one, too.”  

You open your mouth with every intention of setting him straight, telling him that it was just your best pal, but what comes out is, “Yeah.  Good to hear from back home.” 

You open your own notebook to write him back, and suddenly, your toes don’t feel so cold anymore.  

 

* * *

**February, 1943**

You’ve been traveling across the French countryside for four days now.  You met up with a group of French troops a day or so back, and a guy named Jacques Dernier has been regaling your unit with their stories - how Hitler marched through their town, or how one of them was there when he took his photo in front of the Eiffel Tower.  You know just enough French to follow along, since you’re stationed along the northern Italian border, and you grimace as he starts describing the SS.  You haven’t run into any of their forces yet, and you’re immeasurably glad.  

Snow drifts around the camp, and you watch as it starts to settle on the tents, small white mountains in the gloom of a cloudy night.  You pat your breast pocket and remember the letter you’d received from Steve two weeks back.  He was in Chicago, and you wondered what he was doing, traveling across the country with lungs like his, hoping that his employers understood that they couldn’t push him too far.  Steve reiterated that the job was going well, and that his employers were pretty pleased with his work.  

It wasn’t hard to tell that Steve wasn’t enjoying his job very much, despite its good pay.  You know Steve - you know that he will never be content until he’s making the ultimate sacrifice for his country, leaving his job and his home - your home - and risking his skinny ass to protect freedom in a country he probably couldn’t find on a map until a year ago.  

One of the new recruits is perched by the side of the fire, hunching over what looks like a comic book.  He just came in a week or so ago with a fresh batch of reinforcements, and you figure he probably brought the book with him as a comfort.  

“Hey, kid, what’re you reading?” 

He turns to you - he’s only eighteen or so, you realize, and you look at his build and think of Steve - and smiles.  

“It’s a Captain America comic.  He’s pretty popular right now, back home.  Didn’t realize they’d started making comics of him ’till I got back from basic.” 

“Who the hell is Captain America?” you ask, completely bewildered as you peer at the paragon of an American male, painted in the star spangled banner, splashed and posed across the cover page. 

You wonder if Steve knows about this, and decide that you’ll mention it when you next write to him, because you’re absolutely sure that it’ll enrage him to see a soldier used for such a yellow journalist effort.  

“He’s this guy who can lift motorcycles over his head and stuff, and they made all these videos that show him shooting guys up and stuff,” the kid says, and shrugs.  “He came to my hometown - uh, Seattle - when I was on leave, right before I shipped out.  The guy was crazy, could do all these amazing things.  My girl, Anne, she was crazy for him,” he adds, laughing.  

“Huh,” you say, turning away from Captain America before you get sick.  The kid has no idea what it’s really like, and neither does this Captain - all he is, is a goddamn suit, an empty shell designed to get more men to pledge their lives, more wives to pledge their family’s money.  Scrap metal for the war effort.  

You pull out Steve’s letter just to look at his handwriting again, but your gaze lingers on one line in particular.  

_You know, I never really knew before, but - I always saw the world in black and white.  But now I realize that there’s so much more to it.  And I know it sounds dumb, but I almost wish I could go back to seeing the way I did before.  Things were simpler, back then.  Back when it was easy.  Life or death - and there I was, always by your side, leaning on you._

You miss him, like a chasm in one of those glaciers that cap the Alps.  You miss him in a way that makes your palms ache for wanting, makes your toes curl and your breath come short.  You miss him like a crocus misses spring.  

You wonder if you will see any, on this mission, pushing back the snow.  Stretching towards the sun.  

 

* * *

**April, 1943**

Later, you will remember that day, that mission, and wonder what you would have become, if only the 107th hadn’t been scheduled to march into Austria, into enemy territory, to destroy some godforsaken science base occupied by Nazi forces.  

Later, you wonder if you would ever have been any different at all.  

It begins just past supper, as the light is starting to tinge orange on the western horizon.  You love sunsets, because you know that somewhere, out west, Steve is there, and he’s looking at the same sun.  The tips of trees are just starting to turn ochre when an explosion craters the ground twenty feet to your left.  

“Grenades!” someone shouts, and you scramble for your gun, rolling behind the nearest log.  Your ears are ringing and something hits the log two feet from your head - not a bullet, or any sort of projectile, but a bizarre sort of _light_ , strong enough to cause the wood to shatter.  You rise up to fire two quick shots into the bodies of Krauts, who are wearing bizarre face masks that look sort of like they’re designed for gas.  Your throat seizes up, and you remember Steve telling you all those years ago that his dad died of mustard gas - will they do the same to you?  Will Steve get a letter, telling him that you died the same way as his pa, without ever saying goodbye?  

You look to your left, and see Dugan clutching his rifle about ten feet from you, crouched behind a low-sitting boulder.  He shoots you a glance and you nod at him, tilting both your head and rifle towards the Germans.  He grins, nods, and sets his bowler hat more securely on his head.  You rise as one.  You fight. 

#

You don’t remember how you get captured, just that one of the light beams hit you but it doesn’t make you disintegrate and you wonder why, right before darkness takes you.  When you wake, you are trapped in a cell that’s big enough to fit six men, but is crammed with closer to twenty.  The scent of blood and sweat hangs tangible in the air, and you think you might choke on it.  There’s someone next to you, nudging you awake, and you turn to find a black fella, eyes wide with concern.  

“Hey, man, you all right?  You’ve been out for a while.”  

You shake your head.  Maybe you’re dreaming?  You weren’t traveling with any colored units, were you?  

“Yeah, I’m okay. Where are we?” 

“Some HYDRA base,” the black guy says, eyes glowing white in the gloom.  “In the prison.”  

“Were you with our company?” 

“Yeah,” the man says, offering you his hand.  “I’m Gabe Jones.  And I ain’t surprised you don’t remember us, the colored units are always kept separate from the white units.”

“Same with the Japanese units,” a voice says behind you, and you twist your head to see a Jap with a kind face and a wide smile.  “I’m Jim Morita.”  

You shake his hand.  “Bucky Barnes, to both of you.  Now, how the fuck are we getting out of here?” 

Morita laughs.  “We aren’t.  They captured a British unit a week or so back, one of the guys told us that this place is rock solid.  There’s no way out, except the guards come sometimes to take someone away.” 

“Why?” 

“Don’t know,” comes a soft British accent from your right.  “But they don’t come back.”  The man leans around a slumped soldier, sleeping against the bars of the cage, to take your hand.  “James Falsworth, at your service.”  

“Nice to meet you,” you say, grinning.  “Well, then.  I guess we just gotta wait for someone to come rescue us.”  

#

It’s just after midnight on the fourth day when they take you.  Two guards lead you, stumbling and swearing, to what looks like a laboratory, walls dripping with something slick and a metal table to one side of the room that’s stained with blood.  

They gag you.  They strap you down.  

(Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 32557038)

You know a man, small and mousy, spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose.  

(“Inject him.”)

You know pain.  

(You thought you did, before.  You were wrong.)  

Your veins are flame, your skin, ash.  

(“Draw a pint of his blood.  We must be able to re-create the process.”)

“Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 32557038, James… 325…”

You are unmade.   

_#_

You lose time.  You lose everything.  You know your mouth is forming words, but your brain cannot tell you what they are.  You will die here, you know, in this prison, and if you don’t… Well, you’ll wish you were, because you have HYDRA in your veins now.  You close your eyes.  You’re ready.

Softly - like you’re underwater - you hear a voice that you know better than your own.  And you think you must be in hell, but you don’t understand why Steve would be there, too.  

“Bucky?”

You open your eyes, and it’s like seeing light for the first time.  

“Steve?”  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tbh im pretty sorry its taking me forever but i promise im getting there ok only three more updates and i also promise i wont add any more chapters (but i mean dont hold me to that ok its like a half promise) oops
> 
> kudos/comments/whatever are always nice to wake up to in the mornings <3 love you all!


	8. the nightmare fighters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2 tired to beta this so i will go back over it maybe tomorrow i am so sorry for any mistakes i may have made im basically trash

_From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,_  
_And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze._  
_Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,_  
_I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.  
_ _When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose._

_\- Randall Jarrell, “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner”_

 

**April, 1943**

You are twenty-five when Captain America saves you from the clutches of HYDRA.  

You know his name, but you do not know his face.  

As you run from the HYDRA base you are still in shock because the man beside you _is_ Steve, but is not Steve, not in any of the physical ways that matter.  His shoulders are too broad, his jaw too wide, his head nearly a foot too high.  

( _“Is it permanent?” “So far.”_ ) 

You walk at his side until you have no fight left in your thighs, in muscles that have remained static for too long to not feel discomfort.  Captain America - no, _Steve_ \- hands out orders like he was born to do so.  The men fall in around him, pitching tents with supplies stolen from Nazi trucks, building fires with any dry wood they can find.  

Steve turns to you and smiles, and you have never wanted to cry so bad in your entire life.  

“Hey,” he says, soft, and you remember sun on skin and blood on khaki, a notebook clutched in bony fingers, struggling to breathe.  

“Hey,” you say, because what is there left to say?  This is one of your nightmares, straight from the tar-sand corners of your subconscious: Steve in the war, Steve in the line of fire, Steve risking his stupid neck to save those who can save themselves.  

(You have always saved him, and you wonder if he even needs you anymore.  What use you are to Steve Rogers.  To the boy you have defended as long as you can remember, since he held out his hand to you in an alleyway, tear-streaks washing the grime from his face.) 

“Let’s, uh,” Steve pauses, looking around.  “Let’s sit down?” 

(He doesn’t order you around.  You wonder why.  You’ve always been good at that.  Taking orders.) 

“Sure,” you say easily, and he guides you over to a fallen log that rests by one of the fires.  

Steve opens his mouth like he wants to say something, closes it again, and looks at you.  His eyes are imploring, guilty, elated.  Relieved.  

“How are you feeling?” 

“I’m fine,” you say, like a reflex.  Like pulling a trigger.  Like holding a knife.  

“You’re not.”  

You shrug.  “No worse than any of these guys.”  

“What did they do to you?” Steve asks, and you watch as his hands twitch, probably because he’s aching to check you over for injuries.  

“Could ask you the same thing.”  

He winces.  “Bucky, I’m - I’m sorry, I-”

“You’re _sorry_?” you say, and the words come out all wrong again, like they did so many years ago.  “Sorry for letting the Army shoot you up on God-only-knows-what, sorry for not telling me you’d volunteered to be a scientific guinea pig, sorry for not telling me you were _Captain fucking America_?  Which part, Steve?” 

And the worst part is that he sits there and takes it without question.  Like he thinks he deserves it, every word, every scathing syllable.  

“All of it,” he says, taking off his helmet and setting it at his feet.  The “A” stares back at you, mocking.  “I wanted to tell you, Buck.  I wanted to tell you the night you shipped out, but I was afraid - I was so afraid I wouldn’t be good enough.  That they would give me the chance to prove myself and I would fail.  I’ve always failed, you know that - and I didn’t want you to leave thinking I was putting myself in danger.  You wouldn’t have gone.”  

You open your mouth to argue, but he interjects, “No.  Don’t say that’s not true, ‘cause we both know it is.”  

Of course it is.  If Steve had told you, you would’ve done anything - everything - to have stalled your deployment.  You would choose Steve every time.  

“Why did you come, Steve?”  

He blinks, like it was the last thing he expected you to ask.  “I don’t understand.”  

You gesture towards the men, many of whom are already curled up on stolen bedrolls.  “This isn’t an officially sanctioned rescue attempt.  They would never send Captain America in here alone-” Steve winces when you use the name, but you press on, “-so what made you come?  Why’d you disobey orders?” 

Steve breathes deeply.  You have never heard his lungs work like that, even on good days.  “I was - well, I was touring, and Peggy - uh, Agent Carter - told me that I was speaking to what was left of the 107th.  I had to - Bucky, I had to know if you were okay, and when Phillips said he’d signed a letter with your name on it…” He raises his eyes to look at you, and you shiver, because the pain in his eyes is so raw, something you know all too well. “I couldn’t believe him.  I couldn’t believe you were dead.  So… I came looking.”  

“And what, just walked into Austria with a brass blessing?”  

Steve shakes his head.  “Stark flew me in,” he says, sheepish.  “Agent Carter convinced him to do it.  She wanted to help, when she heard that it was your unit.”  

“You could have been killed,” you say, because it’s instinct.  The words feel hollow now, as you stare at Steve’s body, his bones no longer hollow, his chest no longer filled with gravel.  Even his hair looks different.  “God damn it, Steve, you could’a-”

He shakes his head.  “I couldn’t leave you behind, Buck.  I never could.  Not when…” 

You wait for him to finish.  He doesn’t.  

“Don’t do it again,” you say, but you know it’s useless.  Steve never listens to you.  

“Couldn’t exactly leave my best fella to suffer at the hands of the Nazis, could I?” Steve says quietly, his mouth twisting up in a hint of his old smile.  Your chest still feels empty, and you do not smile back.  

“What did they do to you?” 

Steve shrugs.  “Pumped me full of serum and radiation.  Hurt like a bitch, but - well, I guess it worked.”  

( _“Inject him,”_ and you wonder-)

“What did it change?”  

Steve smiles tentatively, like he’s still worried you’re going to lash out at him.  “Basically fixed all the old medical conditions - I don’t have asthma, anymore, and I can lift a lot of weight, I guess, and - well, my heart murmur’s gone and I can see colors now-”

“You can see colors?” you interrupt, forgetting for a second that you’re upset with Steve, just remembering the letter he wrote you - _You know, I never really knew before, but - I always saw the world in black and white.  But now I realize that there’s so much more to it._ He was trying to tell you, even then.  

“Yeah,” Steve says.  “I’ll - if it’s okay, and if I can get my hands on some pencils, I’d - well, I’d like to draw you sometime.  Now that I can see properly.”  

“Okay,” you say.  “They must’ve changed a lot.”  

Steve shrugs again.  “They say I’m the perfect man, now.”  

You turn away and pull out your gun to start cleaning it.  

(You don’t say, “I think you were perfect, before.”)

 

* * *

**May, 1943**

The army offers you a honorable discharge.  

Steve looks you in the eye and asks, “You ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?” 

You swallow down your fear, the way your blood sings in a way that doesn’t feel quite right.  

“Hell no.  That little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb not to run from a fight.  I’m following him.”  

Steve smiles at you like you’re the greatest thing he’s ever seen.  

You would follow him anywhere, even in death.  You would follow him to the end of the world, and you think - you think you just might have to.  

#

“Steve, you have to.  It’s - we have to put up a front, even here - _especially_ here.”  

Steve stares at you like you’re out of your mind.  Maybe you are.  “Bucky, I won’t do that to her.  Not when I have no intention-”

“And why not?” you plead.  “Why don’t you?  She’s perfect for you, Stevie, she’s smart and she sees you for _you_ , not just for Captain America, and you know, I bet you two could be happy together-”

“Stop talking,” Steve says, halting and stopping the flow of his pacing.  You are in his tent, which is considerably bigger than the tents for enlisted soldiers, and he gets it all to himself.  You stare up at him from where you’re sitting on his cot, and you force your fists to relax.  

“Bucky, why can’t you just _understand_ -” he huffs, rubbing one hand over his face.  “I don’t _want_ her.  I told you ages ago, I’ve never wanted anyone except you.  You’re it for me, Buck.”  

You put your head in your palms, just for something to do.  “Steve, it can’t be like that forever.  You know I’d like nothing more for the world to change, for everything to be different, but - especially now, since you’re Captain America and everything - men don’t stay bachelors like that!  You know that - fellas’re just labeled fairies if they do, and you’re gonna be expected to marry, and why not Peggy, if you gotta do it eventually?” 

Steve’s eyes feel like drill bores, moving steadily down into your heart.  “And you, Buck?  What’ll you do?” 

You try to smile, but it comes out as a grimace. “Nobody knows me.  I could - I dunno, move nearby, I guess, be your kids’ surrogate uncle or somethin’.”

The sound Steve makes at that is something far from human - a choked whimper that sounds like one of the half-starved alleycats that used to hang out behind your apartment.  “Bucky, _no._   We’ll find a way to make it work - maybe we could tell Peggy, she might understand, or we can run away to Canada, after the war-”

“That’s if we both _survive_ it, Steve!” you shout, suddenly standing and you don’t know where the rage came from but it’s there now.   “And you can’t just disappear, you know that - you’re being naive-”

“Naive?” Steve parrots, eyebrows raising to his hairline.  “Is it naive to lo- to want to be with you, Buck?  Is that what you’re saying?  That it’s a lack of judgment-”

“I don’t know, Steve, maybe!” 

His eyes are glacial.  “Get out.”  

“Steve, don’t-”

“Get. Out.” 

“No.”  

Something in Steve’s expression changes, yielding the skinny punk he had been before you shipped out, before everything changed, and you recognize a challenge.  “Am I gonna have to make you?” 

“I don’t know, _Captain_.”  

He presses into your space, but instead of pushing you out of his tent, he grabs your neck and yanks you in for a kiss.  You surrender to him, like you always have - but now, he has the strength to match his will.  

(You were never strong enough to resist Steve Rogers.  You never will be.) 

“I can’t fucking believe you,” Steve says in between kisses, nipping at your lips, your jaw, your clavicle.  He yanks your collar to the side to gain better access, and you let him push you down onto the cot.  “Fucking telling me to marry Peggy, Bucky, when you know she could never replace you, what’s _wrong_ with you-”

“Steve,” you gasp, arching as his nails scrape over ribs that are too close to the surface of your skin for comfort.  “I’m - I’m sorry, I-”

“You _what_?” Steve almost growls, physically _tearing_ your shirt to access one of your nipples.  You want to scream, it’s so hot.  

“I - fuck me, Steve, fuck me, please.”  It’s all you can think to say, and you know that it isn’t nearly enough.  You’re injured, still healing, but all you want is for Steve to split you open, to claim you and make you his, take your body back from HYDRA, reclaimed by the one person who has always had ownership of it - 

Steve groans, and whispers, “ _Yes._ ”  

There’s no more talking for a long time.  

 

* * *

**August, 1943**

The Howling Commandos (as the comic book companies have branded your multi-racial band of misfits) are on assignment in Austria, and it’s so hot you’re considering moving at your post to take your jacket off.  But if you did that, it would mean signaling your position to anyone who could be watching, and you spent too long settling into this sniper post for someone to take it away from you.  

Dusk is falling, and you welcome the relative cool of night, grimacing as a drop of sweat rolls down your nose and into the scarce beard you’ve been sporting since the last time you found a useable razor (one week ago, about twenty miles from the Austrian-Italian border).  You watch, and you wait.  

Your job is simple - pick off any reinforcements that may come as Steve and the others are clearing the base you’ve been sent to destroy.  It’s almost too easy from where you’re stationed to pick off HYDRA goons one by one - clean headshots, all of them, except for the CO, who you shoot in the knees.  Steve will want to question him.  

The rhythm of killing sings in your blood as you squeeze the trigger - _exhale, squeeze, inhale, exhale, squeeze_ \- and calm suffuses your body as you go.  All that exists is you and the men you are gunning down; you feel nothing as their brain matter splatters over the rubble behind them, as their bodies fall to the ground in thuds you can hear despite their distance.  

You have done this before.  You are good at this.  It’s easy, like stitching a wound, like torturing a man, like breathing.  

Steve emerges from the base, and salutes you.  

You nod back.  

# 

Steve questions the CO, but he won’t give up anything.  The Commandos leave you alone, Steve shooting you a sympathetic glance as they go, and you bind the man, strategically cutting and twisting until  he gives up his information.  There is blood on your knife, on your hand.  You tell Steve what he needs to know, and return to finish the job.  

As he dies, the man pleads that he has a family.  He pulls out a photo from his breast pocket, as if to prove it, but you slice his throat anyways. Afterwards, you take the picture.  The man and a woman stand behind two children, both beautiful.  Their eyes are big and the boy reminds you of Steve.  

#

He finds you by the fire, that night.  You killed twenty-eight men.  One of them had a family.  All of them had families.  

He holds you as you break apart under his touch, but you are no longer shaking.  

You are not sorry.  

 

* * *

**February, 1944**

The Howling Commandos intercept a shipment of Jews near the border of Germany and Austria.  They are thin - so thin, like Steve used to be in winter - and their clothes are gray, a yellow star stitched on their breasts.  They are being escorted by SS officers.  

Steve breaks their CO’s neck.  

You watch him, as he does it, and feel an echoing violence within yourself.  It watches his shoulders, the way he holds himself, and responds.  

You do not know if this was there before - that want - no, _need_ \- to kill.  

You don’t care.  You do it anyways, knifing SS officers with brutal efficiency, watching as their blood drenches the ground, soaks into your skin.  

A baptism.  

 

* * *

**March, 1944**

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.  It has been three years since my last confession.  I have killed a lot of people, Father.”  

“This is the Army, my son.  I should expect so.”  

“But I enjoy killing them, Father, and I don’t think - that’s not right, is it?  I’d never killed anyone before, but now, it’s like - it’s an addiction, or something. When I’m killing - I feel at peace.”  

“Who are you killing?” 

“Nazis, Father.”  

“It is not a sin to wage a righteous war.”

“Thank you, Father.”

“Is this all you wished to confess?”  

“Father, I… Yes.  Father, yes.”  

 

* * *

**June, 1944**

Agent Carter finds you one night after you’ve finished up a routine training exercise with some of the new recruits. They look starstruck to be standing in your presence, and you scowl at the thought of the ‘Bucky Barnes’ the comics portray - a kid, no less, in tights and a domino mask.  Like those could ever conceal an identity.  Like you could ever be anything other than a simple enlisted soldier.  

“Sergeant Barnes,” Agent Carter says, coming to a halt by where you’re perched on a chair, cleaning your favorite rifle.  

“What can I do for you, ma’am?” you ask, not bothering to look up.  

“I was wondering if we might have a word.”  

“You’ve got my attention,” you say, starting to fit the pieces of the gun back together, savoring the way the metal feels under your fingers.  

“In private.”  

You do look up at that, and your heart catches in your chest because she _knows_.  You can see it in her eyes - it’s pity, sorrow, but there isn’t disgust like you expected.  

“Okay. Lead the way, Agent.”  

“Call me Peggy,” she says, and you cross the cracked ground of camp back to her quarters.  

“James,” she begins as you seat yourself on her spare chair, “I need to talk to you about Steve.” 

“You can call me Bucky,” you correct, “and I figured as much.”

She pauses, pressing her lips together, and you watch as her hands worry at her shirt sleeve.  “I don’t know how I didn’t notice it before.  I feel - you must realize that I would never-”

“I know,” you interject.  “I know.  And he - I know he likes you too, Peggy.  I’ve tried to talk to him, tried to get him to come around, but he won’t listen to me.”  

“He is fairly stubborn, isn’t he?” she says, lips twisting into a smirk.  

You nod.  “That’s one way to put it. He won’t listen, he keeps thinking that there’ll be some way to work it out when the war’s over.  And if you need to tell someone - just, don’t say anything about Steve, this job means everything to him and I couldn’t bear to be the cause of him losing that.  I can’t do it.”  

“No, of course I wouldn’t…  But, Bucky, you must realize-”

“Look, Peggy,” you say, interrupting again without thinking of the fact that it could be considered insubordinate.  “If anything happens to me, you have to be there for him.  And I’m not telling you to keep holding a candle for him, but if I died, maybe - I think the two of you could be happy.  I wish I could make him see sense, because you would be good together.  He needs a dame as strong as you.”  

Peggy considers you for a moment, and it’s incredible how naked her gaze makes you feel.  Steve searches inside you like there’s something precious to find, but Peggy flays you raw.  “Thank you, James,” she says, “but I didn’t bring you here to receive your blessing.  I came here to give you mine.”  

Your throat seizes up, and you wonder if this is how Steve felt, every time he suffered an asthma attack.  Like the world was spinning around him, like he could never take in enough air.  

You say, “Thank you.” 

It isn’t enough. 

(It will never be enough.) 

 

* * *

**September, 1944**

Some nights, you wake to the smell of sweat and blood and damp dirt that has never truly dried.  You wake to the smell of alcohol and chemicals, to the sound of a small voice with a thick accent tripping over calculations and blood flow.  You wake, and you burn.  

You share a tent with Steve, out on the front, and on those nights he pulls you into his arms and holds you until the shaking stops.  

_It’s almost dawn, you’re in France, you’re James Buchanan Barnes, and I’m Steve Rogers.  I’ve got you, Bucky, I’ve got you-_

Sometimes you shake back to sleep.  Others, you lie awake, hpyer-vigilant in the cool dark, waiting for Steve’s chest to rattle or for his heart to skip a beat.  

(It never comes.) 

Some nights, you wonder what they did to you.  Why you can go as long as Steve without sleeping, now - why your reflexes have improved just enough to be noticeable.  Why brutality feels like your mother tongue.  

(You think it always has.) 

 

* * *

**December, 1944**

“Barnes, it’s Christmas!” Falsworth nearly shouts over the jazz music they’re playing in the Allied-held pub where you’re taking refuge for the night. 

“Here’s to not having to walk three miles back to camp after a hard night’s work,” Dugan agrees, lifting his glass.  The other Commandos toast to that, and you smile and walk away to find Steve and a very stiff whiskey.  

You find him sitting at the bar, an entire bottle of what looks like vodka by his right elbow.  He’s already halfway through it, and doing nothing more than twirling his glass as he watches the vodka inside whirlpool.  

“You drink this whole thing, you’re gonna be sick,” you say, even though you both know it isn’t true.  Neither you nor Steve can get drunk these days.  You’ve started to get really good at faking it.  

You pour yourself three fingers and hold up your glass.  “To killing Nazis,” you say, a grin stretching across your face.  

Steve laughs, a tired, defeated sound.  “To killing Nazis,” he agrees, and you drink.  “How are you doing?” 

“Not bad,” you say.  “The men are having a good time.  This was a nice idea, Stevie.”  

You and Steve watch as a colored girl sidles up to Gabe and pulls him onto the dance floor.  “Looks like they’re even finding company,” you say, watching as other girls start to snatch up the rest of the men.  

Steve glances over at you.  “Think they’ll miss us if we leave?”  

You smirk.  “Even if they did, they’d probably just think we were going over tactical plans.  Captain America and Sergeant Barnes, fags?” you scoff.  “It even sounds stupid to me.”  

Steve grins at you.  “Well then, Sergeant Barnes, I’ll see you upstairs.”  

“Be right there, Captain,” you call after him, watching his hips sway as he goes.  

#

You are pillowed on Steve’s chest, listening to his heart slow, when the words slip out without thinking.  

“Steve, if I don’t make it-”

“Bucky, don’t start talking that way now,” Steve says, and you can almost feel exasperation seeping from now-invisible pores.  

“If I don’t make it,” you insist, “I need you to find a way to be happy.”  

“I don’t know if I could do that, Buck.”  

“Ask Peggy to go dancing.  For me, okay?  If anything happens to me, you ask that dame to go dancing with you, or so help me, Rogers, I’ll rise straight up from Hell myself-”

Steve laughs.  “Can’t believe you still think we’re damned for eternity just ‘cause we’re two fellas, but all right, Bucky.  If it makes you feel better, I promise.  But - hey, look at me,” he says, grabbing your chin and forcing your eyes to meet his, “I would die before I let anything happened to you.  Do you understand?” 

Your answering smile is weak with everything you’ve left unsaid.  “Pretty sure that’s my line, you punk.”  

You fall asleep to the sound of Steve’s breathing, his laughter still ringing in your ears.  

 

* * *

**February, 1945**

You’ll never forgive Steve for picking the side of a mountain as a camping spot, and you’re pretty certain the other Commandos won’t either, judging by the accusatory looks they continue to send his way.  Steve sits by the fire, calm as anything, body so hot he isn’t even shivering.  You’ve never minded the cold, and it’s nice to be reminded that it doesn’t bother Steve now, either.  

Falsworth, Dugan, Morita, and Dernier are clustered around the field rations, partitioning out miserably small meals to each member of the team.  As always, you watch to make sure they take some of your food to give to Steve.  His metabolism runs high now - he needs it.  

(You try not to think about how you probably need it, too, after what HYDRA did to you.)  

You think that HYDRA is the only reason you’re currently sitting on this mountainside - HYDRA, and the reasonable grudge your squad holds against Arnim Zola, whose train you will be intercepting tomorrow at just past dawn.  Your bones sing at the thought of revenge; you have pictured a thousand ways of killing him, but your knife is tucked safe against your calf, and you know that is how you will do it.  Slowly, intimately, so that you can relish every expression of pain that crosses his pig face.  

You don’t even think Steve would stop you.  

He’s been unusually silent the whole night, and you find yourself watching him out of the corner of your eye.  His hands twitch like they ache to hold something - a pencil, a brush, a gun - and you touch his shoulder gently.  

“Hey, I’m gonna turn in,” you say, widening your eyes and hoping that it drives your meaning across.  

“All right,” Steve says, smiling, but it’s not a real smile, and your heart sinks.  Something’s wrong.  

Steve comes in the tent fifteen minutes after you’ve settled yourself in your bed roll, brushing fresh snow from his shoulders and setting his shoes by the entry.  

“What is it?” you ask, nerves rising as he carefully folds his jacket and sets it at the foot of his bed.  He’s stalling.  

“Nothing, Buck.  Don’t worry about it,” he says, climbing into his bedroll and moving it close to yours.  

“You’re a bad liar, Rogers.”  

Steve sighs.  “It’s just - I have a bad feeling about tomorrow’s mission, that’s all.”  

“Welcome to the club,” you say.  “That’s how we all feel before every mission.”  

“This is different,” he insists, shaking his head like he means to clear it.  “I just… never mind, it’s stupid.”

“Get some rest, Stevie,” you say, tucking a strand of hair out of his eyes and brushing your fingertips soft against his three-day-old beard.  “You’ll need it for tomorrow.”  

He nods, already dropping off to sleep.  “You too, Buck.  I… sleep well.”  

You don’t ask him what he was about to say.  You never can.  

#

You are twenty-six years old when you follow Steve Rogers onto a moving train in the middle of the Alps.  

You are twenty-six years old when you become Steve Rogers’ shield for the last time.  This time, you defend more than Steve’s dignity - you are defending Steve Rogers’ life, Captain America’s legacy.  You are defending the man that you love.  

You are twenty-six years old when you pick up the shield.  

He said he would die before he let anything happen to you.  

(He was wrong.) 

You are twenty-six years old when you fall, and he does not catch you.  

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *whale noises* my god this took ages, drop me a line/leave me kudos if you like the shit <3333 i love all yall anyways sooo


	9. deep among the dead

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ??????????? pls oh my ogd im????

_Sunk in his bronze world he stands, enchanted._  
_His bronze mind is deep among the dead._  
_Sunk so deep among the dead that, much  
_ _As he would like to remember us all, he cannot._

_\- Ted Hughes, “Platform One”_

 

**February, 1945**

Later, you will tell people that you lost consciousness when you hit the snow.  That you do not remember anything between falling and waking, just an oppressive blackness, the sense-memory of impact.  

(Later, you will lie.) 

The railing gives out and Steve Rogers fades above you.  Your body is weightless, and you scream his name like a prayer before it is swallowed by the storm.  

The fall lasts for seconds, for hours, and you watch the river rush up to meet you knowing it’s the last thing you’ll ever see.  

When you hit, you feel nothing.  You do not die.  

Your body is broken - you know this, you can feel fire in your marrow when you shift your bones.  The air smells like snow and blood, and you gaze down passively at your own body as ice begins to collect on your jacket, your flesh.  

You are cold - colder than you can ever remember being, even in the dead of winter, huddled under one scratchy blanket in the orphanage.  Snowflakes begin to gather on your coat, and you watch passively as it accumulates, quarter inch by quarter inch.  

You think Steve must have captured Zola by now.  He promised you he would do anything to ensure that nothing happened to you, so you know it’s only a matter of time before he comes looking for you.  It’s just a matter of staying alive until then.  

It’s not natural, you know, how long your body has gone without losing feeling.  You should be numb, your toes and fingers and ears and nose purpling, but instead you feel every inch of cold on your body, like thousands of small flames held to your skin.  

Steve will come.  He will come.  

Night falls, and your left arm loses feeling from where it lies underneath a snow drift.  The right side of your body is sheltered by a stump, and remains agonized.  

You wonder why you’re still here.  Why Steve hasn’t rescued you, yet.  The stars have come out in between weather fronts, and you watch as the constellations turn with the night.  Orion laughs at you, Eridanus calls to you.  Your world fades into shadow, and you wish you could die.  Anything would be preferable to this - a certain limbo, not in Hell, not called to Purgatory.  You swim with the children who were never baptized, and wonder why the Lord did not have better plans for you.  

You think about praying, but you cannot pray to Him.  Your words find shelter in the darkness, creeping past chapped lips that you know are purple with cold.  

You close your eyes, and wait for Steve.  

#

Two days later, they find you.  

You are dragged across ground you cannot feel until your head hits a rock that has been covered by snow.  

You surrender yourself to the darkness.  

 

**March, 1945**

When you wake, you are in a room that smells like chemicals, like dirt that has never truly dried.  This, you know.  

You are not restrained, and you wonder why before you try to move.  Every inch of your body screams its protest and you lay there, supine, on the metal table, waiting for someone to kill you, to set you free.  

(If you die, you will never see Steve again.  That is okay.  He doesn’t need protecting, now.)  

Zola enters the room, closely followed by three men that wear HYDRA emblems emblazoned on their arms.  You do your best to spit, but your throat is too dry.  

“Give him water.”  

Two of the attendants force a glass to your lips and tell you to drink; you twist your head away and choke out a strangled, “Fuck you.”  

“Ah, Sergeant, that is no way to speak to the men who saved your life,” Zola says passively, eyes never leaving the paperwork he is clutching in his right hand.  “Subject seems to be healing rapidly,” Zola says, apparently to himself.  “The spinal fractures have already fused, and the body now works to heal around the left shoulder area, where the subject suffered severe frostbite.  

You move to ball your left hand in a fist, show him just how much the frostbite really affected you, but you - you - 

You look down.  Your arm is gone, and all that is left is a stump of mangled flesh, scarring over in ugly, catered bands.  

“What did you - what did you do to me-” you begin, starting to struggle against the pain your body is in so that you can murder Zola with your own hands - hand - like you had always intended.  “What the fuck did you do to me, you sick-”

“Sedate him,” Zola says, almost lazily, and the third man plunges a syringe to your neck.  

# 

“What are you planning on doing with me?” is the first thing you ask when next you wake, straining against the (now physical) bonds that HYDRA has placed around your wrist and ankles.  “How the fuck do you think I’m gonna help you-”

Zola smiles at you, soft and gentle.  “You were made to kill Captain America.  Since he is already dead, I believe we shall assign you other targets so that you may remain useful to HYDRA.”  

You stare.  “What do you mean.  What the fuck do you mean, Captain America is dead?  Is this some sort of sick joke?” 

“Not a joke,” Zola insists, puttering around you and noting his findings on his clipboard.  “Captain America has been dead for three days.”  

“Fuck you.  I know what you’re doing, and it’s not gonna work.  I’m not gonna give up anything just ‘cause you tell me my CO is dead.  He ain’t, and I know that, so you can just-”

Zola does look up then, legitimately surprised.  “But he is, Sergeant Barnes.”  He reaches behind him to the medical supply table and pulls out a paper.  The headline reads, _SEARCH FOR CAPTAIN AMERICA’S BODY, STILL IN PROGRESS_ : _WHAT DOES HOWARD STARK HOPE TO FIND IN THE ARCTIC SEA?_

“No.  No, he’s not dead,” you repeat, but you feel your chest tightening, your breath beginning to shorten.  “I would know, I would know if he died, he’s _not dead, he’s NOT DEAD-”_

This time, Zola does not ask someone to sedate you.  The guards do it themselves.  

 

**June, 1945**

“Fuck you,” you say for the three hundred and sixty second time.  “Sergeant Barnes, US Army…” 

Each time you say your name, they pump thousands of volts through your muscles.  You have learned to fear the sound of your own voice.  You wonder if it would be worth it - to steal a gun from a guard, to shoot yourself through the skull.  

But you cannot kill yourself, because Steve is still out there somewhere, and you won’t believe he can’t be found.  

 

**August, 1945**

They trap you in a concrete cage, ringed with iron bars that burn your palms.  You do not know anything between sleeping and waking, not even nightmares.  

You repeat your mantra every hour.  It grounds you.  You have recorded the days on the cell walls, etched in blood that Zola draws from your body like water from earth.  The wounds heal quickly, and you wonder why it matters.  If you would rather they left you to bleed out on the cell floor.  

(Steve is not dead.  Steve is not dead.  Steve is not-)

 

**September, 1945**

They bring you to a chair that looks like so many you have been trapped in, before, only this one has something that hovers over the headrest, like it will attach to your temples.  You try to struggle but you are weak, so weak from your failed hunger strikes and sleepless nights - they force feed you, knock you out, and still you survive, like a goddamn cockroach in a storm. 

(You wish for nothingness.  For the pain to be taken away.  For anything but this misery, this unknowing - if Steve is truly alive, if you are truly alive.  If you are dead, is this your Purgatory?)

“The Soldier has proved itself an unwilling subject.  The device has been refined by Agent Stark, and it appears that…” 

You stop hearing Zola, after that.  Stark?  What could he have to do with this - the man was Steve’s friend, your acquaintance?  Someone you trusted? 

“Take a seat, Soldier.”  

“My name is Bucky Barnes,” you spit, and his eyes narrow in distaste.  

“No, it is not.  Not anymore.”  

“Fuck you, you fucking bastard-”

You struggle, but they slip a mouthguard between your teeth, lock your arms into the chair, ignore your screaming.  You watch as the headpiece descends until electricity fills your body.  

You scream.  You know no more. 

#

When you wake, you’re in a different room.  You don’t know how this one is different, exactly, only that it had changed from what it once was.  You don’t remember what placed you in this room, or the other.  You don’t know - 

A man is stepping back from you, and another says, “You will be the new arm of HYDRA.”  You look down, and there is something metal attached to where you know there once was empty space, and before that, flesh.  

You strangle the man retreating from you.  You don’t know why you do it.  You just know that it’s right.  

 

**October, 1945**

“What is your name?”  

“… It’s - it’s-”

“Soldier!  What is your name?” 

“J- James?  My name is James?” 

“Rack up the voltage.”  

“Soldier, what is your name?” 

Pain.  Excruciating.  It races through your veins like quicksilver, burning, freezing as it goes.  

“I don’t know.  I don’t know.”  

“What is your name?”  

“S - Steve.  Steve.” 

“You have no name, Soldier.  You have no self.  Do you deny it?” 

“But… Steve.  I remember a man named Steve.” 

“He is dead, Soldier.  He is dead.  What is your name?” 

“I have no name.” 

 

**December, 1945**

The first time they put you on ice, you are twenty-seven, and you know nothing past the sleeping and the waking but cold, cold, _cold._   It reminds you of something, you think, as you feel the ice coat your flesh.  A canyon, a blizzard, a train - a hand, outstretched.  

You do not exist, beyond the waking.  You are nothing but a Soldier.  You have no name.  Without a name, you have no past.  

This, you know.  

 

**June, 1946**

They wake you.  

They hand you a gun.  

They tell you to shoot.  

(You know this.  It is in your muscles.  In your blood.)  

There is a man in Siam, and you are told to get close, to shoot him in his bedchamber as he sleeps.  They give you the mission, and you try to ask them - _why_?  Why this man?  How does he deserve to die?  

Your body is lit on fire by an electric shock from your left arm.  You collapse, your throat beyond pain, swallowing your scream.  

“Don’t ask questions.  He is your target.  Do you understand?”  

Target.  You know that word.  You think you remember something - men, shot down, gunshots through the head, at an abandoned building in Austria.  A man in red, white, and blue.  Salutes.  

“I understand.”  

#

You kill him.  It feels natural, squeezing that trigger, just like it feels taking a breath.  You wonder what you were.  If you were ever anything, before this.  

When they bring you in for your report, they ask you your name.  

“I have no name.”  

The man - Zemo? - grins.  “That’s right, Soldier.  You have no name.”  

(You don’t know how you know his name.  It is like it has always been there, a piece of information waiting for recall.  You find nothing about who _you_ are, no image to recall.)  

You are forced to conclude they are right.  You have no name.  You are Soldier.  You are the gun. 

(This, you know: saltwater on your tongue, skin and sea, the pain of scabbed knuckles and sunburned shoulders.)

They tell you that you do not know anything.  

You believe them.  

 

**November, 1959**

You wake to the sensation of your muscles thawing.  Thinking is difficult for the first few minutes, you know (how do you know?), and you are grateful to your frozen brain for making it more difficult to feel.  

You still feel the pain.  

They wake you and you fall dripping to the floor, naked and shuddering in the dry heat of the room.  

“Get him up.”  

They force you to stand and you are halfway through calculating the force it would take to smash one guard’s head when you realize you are not fighting.  You are not meant to fight.  That’s not what he would have wanted you to do.  

(Who is he?) 

They give you a mission.  Four politicians, Eastern Europe.  They are scattered throughout countries.  It seems simple.  

They tell you to do them all in one day.  

You do not ask questions about the men they have just pronounced dead.  It is not your place.  You are meant to take it, because if you don’t, there will be pain.  

“Are you going to be able to help us?” Zemo asks, and you think it’s strange that you remember the name when you cannot remember anything else before the waking.  You stare back at him, because you do not trust him.  

“Hey!” Zemo barks.  You turn your eyes.  “You want to be good, right?” he says, fingering an electricity machine, and you are aware the nodes are connected to your temples.  

“Yes.  Da.”  (You know Russian?)  You are the Soldier.  Of course you do.  

“Then complete your mission.”  

You finish the killings in sixteen hours’ time.  Your handlers give you a reward - they tell you that they’ll invite you to tour their new facility.  They call it the “Red Room.”  

They tell you, if you’re good, you may be able to teach the children how to fight.  How to better serve.  

You go with them, and see a child with hair the color of sand.  It looks like Steve’s hair.  

(Who is Steve?)

You walk over to the child and introduce yourself as your alias that your handlers had given to you. 

She smiles at you.  “Hello, Yakov.  My name is Natalia.”  

“Natalia,” you murmur.  “That is a beautiful name.”

 

**May, 1963**

“No,” you say, correcting her stance again.  The girl rolls her eyes and adjusts her weight placement.  You look over her lithe form and nod.  “Good.  Try again.”  

Natalia twists around into a complex S-shape in order to wrap her legs around your shoulders and yank you down to the ground.  She winces as a few strands of her hair fall out - since you met her, it has resumed its natural red.  

(You wonder why you remember meeting her, before.)

“Yes.  Better.”  

Natalia beams.  

“We are done for today, _pavuchky_. Rest.” 

She goes without looking behind her.  

“We have a mission for you,” a voice says behind you, and you turn to find one of your handlers waiting there.    

The Agent hands me a file.  “We need you to kill this man,” he says, pointing to the photo attached to the target’s file.  You do not speak, because you don’t have anything to say.  They always remind you that you must stay silent.  

“And…” the man pauses, now, glancing down to the floor and moving to protect his weak side from your metal arm.  “This man must pay for the crime.”  He points to another photo - this one, of a man wearing a helmet, glaring at a camera with eyes that blaze like dry ice.  They are familiar, somehow, but you don’t know why.

You wonder why you must frame this man.  You don’t know why you care.  

#

Six months later you take an impossible kill shot.  You ensure that you have fled from the scene, but arrange to have him man arrested; it gives you time you need to return to your safe house.  

“You did well,” one of his handlers comments. “He’s dead, and Lensherr goes in jail for it.  You have done well.”  

You say nothing.  You are not expected to speak.  You take your arm, crush his skull.  

You run.

#

You board a train to New York, but you do not know why you choose that destination.  You don’t know why you’re running.  There is nothing for you here, in this wasteland of a country.  

When you get to New York, you catch a subway to Brooklyn.  You see the bridge, an alleyway wedged in between an abandoned warehouse and a new tenement.  

This, you know: it is like coming home, and you cannot understand why.  

#

They find you after two days. 

This time, they put you in the ice without a wipe.  You walk past the chair-machine and they push you straight into the cryochamber.  You wonder where they are moving you next.  You wonder if Natalia will be there.  Your _pavuchky._

Your little spider.  

 

**August, 1970**

She has grown so much since first you met her, a defiant child in a corner with hair like sand.  

(You have never seen sand, before, yet you know its weight, the sensation of it between your toes.  Sea salt on the breeze.) 

She is a woman, now, returned from a mission overseas and she smiles to see you.  Your handlers do not allow you much time outside your cryofreeze, but Natalia is your pupil, and you must evaluate her work.  

“Widow,” you say, keeping your voice professional as your heart aches to hear how she did from her own lips.  “I have read through the mission report.”  

“Yes, sir.”  

“I would like to speak with you about your methods.”  

“Sir?” she asks, clearly surprised at your inferred criticism.  You press on.  

“Comrade Lentiv.  He may have had additional information; I watched the interrogation recordings.  Explain why you killed him.”  

The Widow stares.  “He would not give the information up, sir.  I saw no point in keeping him alive for someone to find who would listen to his descriptions of our identities.”

“Natalia,” you say, placing the folder aside.  “He knew more.  Why did you kill him?”  

She pauses.  “Better a quick, honorable death than any other.”  

“You do not like to torture them,” you say, watching as she tucks her hair behind her left ear - one of her tics.  

“I do not like to watch men suffer.  Sir.”

“Widow,” you say slowly, “I have watched you dance.  Would you consider yourself an artist?” 

She frowns.  “I believe so, sir.”  

You nod.  “Torture is like a dance - beautiful, nerve-wracking, exhilarating.”  

“I don’t understand, Sir.”  

The words flow out of you like they’re your own, but you know they have been said to you before.  It doesn’t matter that you don’t remember it - they exist like a reflex memory, something burrowed deep inside yourselves.  “Suffering takes many forms, Natalia.  A knife through the abdomen, killing a man’s child, or his wife.  Letting him watch as they die.  Killing people is easy, _pavuchky._ Making them suffer is an art.”

“I understand, Sir.”  

“Do you?”  You press a file across the table to her.  “Then show me.” 

 

**January, 1973**

You love her, but you cannot love her in the way she wants.  

You are the only good things in each other’s lives, and when you next wake she is there, and she is beautiful.  She tells you she loves you one night after a debriefing, pressing you up against a wall and touching her lips to yours.  

(You have never felt a touch like that.  You have felt it a hundred times.)  

You let her take you to bed - you have been good, recently, and the Russians allow you more freedom than your old handlers ever did.  They do not know how to properly control you, do not know that you could run if you wanted to, evade them and never look back.  

(You don’t understand why you would do that - what else is there, for you if not the Soldier?  If not the mission?) 

She murmurs Russian into your skin, kisses the scar tissue that lines your left shoulder.  She dips lower and you are lost; you whisper words into the darkness.  The Soldier is not a praying man, but you have heard targets pray before, as you kill them.  

(You do not pray for death.)  

“What?” Natalia says, stopping her movements above you, and you still.  

“Why have you stopped?”  

Natalia looks at you like you are sick; her eyes are lit with worry and curiosity.  “You said a name.  Steve.  Who is Steve?”  

You shake your head - the name sounds familiar, like a mission, or a target.  An echo in the forgotten corners of your mind.  

“I don’t know,” you say.  “I don’t - I don’t know.”  

She slides off you, and lays her hand on your chest.  “It’s all right, Yakov.  It’s all right.”  

“Natalia-” you choke, and you are crying but you don’t know why, sobbing into the soft skin above her clavicle, into the crook of your neck.  She holds you, kisses your forehead like you are a child.  

“Let’s run away,” she whispers.  “Together, yes?  We can go someplace far from here.  Leave all this killing behind.  You and I, Yakov.”  

“Yes,” you whisper.  “Yes.”  

#

You make it to Lyons before they find you.  They rip Natalia from your side and render you unconscious.  When you wake, you are in the chair, and they are taking everything from you.  

They take Natalia.  They take your _pavuchky._

 

**June, 1981**

When they thaw you, they give you a mission.  It is a politician, a businessman, a woman in a flower shop.  It is a boy with blond hair, his eyes wide and blue, clutching his father’s fingers.  

This, you know.  

 

**December, 1991**

The Russians give you back to HYDRA.  You almost miss their red politics, but you cannot find it in yourself to care.  

When HYDRA receives you, a man introduces himself to you with a smile.  

“Hello,” he says.  “My name is Alexander Pierce.  What are you called?”  

You stare blankly.  You have no name.  You have never had a name.  

“Asset.”  

He blinks.  “What is your real name?”  

You’re confused, now.  “Codename: Winter Soldier.  Born 1945.”  

“How did they work the aging?” Pierce asks, turning to an associate.  They glance at a file and look back up at you, their gaze nearly scrutinizing.  

“Part the serum Zola injected him with, part cryofreeze.  It halts the aging process.”  

“Good,” he says, turning back to you.  “Good.  Any other aliases?”  

“The American,” you say automatically, in English.  Pierce smiles, long and slow.  

“He’ll be useful.  Thank Gorbachev for me, will you?” 

“Yes, sir.”  

“Soldier,” Pierce says to you, in English.  “Yakov.  Do you want a mission?” 

“ _Yes_ ,” you say, relief seizing you as he offers you an option to this inaction.  

“This is the file.  Let us know if you need anything.  Weapons are in the next room.”  

You look at the target - a kill order.  Simple.  Clean.  

#

You shoot out the car’s tire and watch as the man behind the wheel loses control, tumbles over the cliff.  You track scrap metal to the wreck, remove the slug that you find embedded in a mangled tire.  You look at the man’s face, at his wife’s terrified expression, frozen forever on her skin.  

Something echoes within you, in a way nothing has for an age.  You do not know this man, but you think he was important. Circles blossom on your eyes, shine red, white, and blue.  A laugh, a basement someplace, warm instead of dark and damp, like the HYDRA bases in which they keep you.  

You shake your head.  He was a target.  Nothing more. 

 

**September, 2001**

They hand you a file, give you nearly a dozen men to target.  You are to torture them into submission.  

You do your job, and you do it well.  

(You remember a girl with hair the color of hot coals, a conversation after a failed mission, _making them suffer is an art_.  You shake your head.  It doesn’t matter, anyways.) 

A week later, you watch as the Word Trade Center falls.  A terrorist organization will take credit for the attack, and the United States will start a war.  Your creators bear chaos in their palms - to begin anew, one must burn the old to the ground.

Pierce is proud of you, and you are pleased with yourself.  

(You wonder why you care for his words of approval.  You don’t know when you became this.  Or - perhaps - you were always this way.) 

 

**February, 2008**

You are tracking a man and his bodyguard through a mountain range somewhere in the Middle East.  When you have a shot, you take it right through the woman who is guarding him; her eyes meet you with an accusation, lucid even as blood streams from her abdomen.  She mouths a name - _Yakov_ \- and you feel something in your bones.  An ache - for a woman you could never deserve, for the child you turned into a killer.  For _pavuchky._

You turn away.  You do not have a name.  You do not have a past.  

You know no Spider.  

 

**May, 2012**

You displace the power balance of three different nations as the Avengers fight, distracted, in the Battle of New York.  

When you are finished, you watch the newsfeeds from the comfort of your safe house.  There is a man, dressed in the colors of the American flag.  You look at him tumbling, diving, jumping over bodies, and you never want to look away.  There is no reason for Captain America to be important to you, and so you turn away, unwilling to watch any longer.  

You are afraid for him, you realize.  For the first time since your _pavuchky,_ you fear for another.  

(You do not remember your _pavuchky_.  You do not know where the thought came from, or where the desire to protect stems.)  

You turn back to the television set, and watch the battle until it ends, just to make sure he survives.  

 

**April, 2014**

They hand you a mission.  Pierce reminds you of your importance to the cause, but you cannot remember what the cause is.  

 _Fury, Nicholas J._ Kill order.  

_Allies: Maria Hill; Natalia Romanova; Steven Rogers.  Casualties acceptable within reasonable parameters._

You scan the dossier and hand the file back as you start to equip yourself in your own kevlar.  You will not fail this mission.  You have never failed a mission.  

(The Soldier.  The Ghost. The American.  That is what they used to call you.  Yakov.) 

# 

“Bucky?” 

No one has ever named you before.  

“Who the hell is Bucky?”  

#

“I knew him.”  

“Prep him.”  

You are halfway through a recitation - _bless me, father, for I have sinned_ - 

Pain.  Darkness. 

#

You try your best to smash in his head.  You try to ignore the words that come from him like water from a spring, _I’m your friend, you’ve known me your whole life, Bucky, Bucky, Bucky -_

“You’re my mission!”  

“Then finish it, ‘cause I’m with you till the end of the line.” 

#  

You are twenty-seven when you watch him fall.  

He sinks beneath the waves, and you wonder why you care.  

(You jump after him, anyways.) 

(You think you always have.) 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> looove me loooooove me saaay that you looove me  
> ??? :) <3  
> almost done!!! i already have some of the next chapter written, and one of my absolute faves makes a very "for-the-writers-pleasure cameo" :D 
> 
> anyways thanks for the support, imma have next chapter done before i leave for africa! then i can finally get started on my next fic :D 
> 
> also the bucky/nat wasnt even supposed to happen but it felt right i guess? idk my process surprises even me sometimes


	10. unsaid between us

_I meant, you meant, that nothing should remain_  
_Unsaid between us, brother, and this remained—_  
_And one thing more that was not then to say:  
_ _The Victory for what it lost and gained._

_\- Robert Frost, “For E.T.”_

 

**May, 2014**

You do not know who you are.  

(You are Soldier. You are Asset.  You have no name.)  

The man - the Target - called you Bucky.  

You go to the Captain America exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of American History - you think that maybe he will have answers.  The man who named you - your mission.  Captain America.  

(Steve Rogers.) 

There is a display with a face on it that is yours, but not yours, because your hair is longer and your face has none of the emotion that Bucky Barnes has.  You hear a disembodied voice say, “ _The only Commando to give his life in service to his country.”_

You think it isn’t right, but you know that it is.  What have they taken from the man who is Bucky Barnes?  

(Everything.)  

You leave, but you leave thinking about the man you fell for.  About the man that fell for you. 

(Everything but sunlight.  Sea salt on the breeze.  Sunburned skin and freckles against sand.  Dead leaves on fresh-laid cement.  Snow on pine needles, singing soft against the breeze.  The rattle of wheels on tracks, cold air whistling past tired ears.)

To save him, you would fall again.  To save him, you would fall a hundred times.  

Your mind does not know him.  

(You can’t figure out why.)

The body remembers.

 

**June, 2014**

You remember words, fragmented, in between the flashes of blond hair and blue eyes that haunt your dreams.  

_“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”_

(How long has it been since your last confession?)

You take the train to New York because you remember it - smoky streets and trash-filled alleys, sticky window latches and frosted panes, the sound of coughing in a nearby bedroom.  A warm body next to yours.  

You go to New York but you cannot go to Brooklyn because you are afraid of what it might hold for you.  You scout out the Avengers Tower (the Target - Steve, Steve - is part of the Avengers), then move west.  You know this ground, you know it like you know a rifle - a Family was based here ( _is_ based here) - and you walk the streets like a shadow.  A ghost.  

A man finds you in a chapel, kneeled in front of the altar in view of the cross.  Your hands are clasped in front of you, a knife tucked in each palm, but you did not know where else to go.  You think you may have visited one of these places, before the war.  In fact, you are certain of it - you remember a wooden confessional, whispers spoken to the divider like felonies with prison sentences, sins so brutal you could not process the blood on your palms.  

You listen to the man’s approaching footsteps and wonder why he is not wary of the man with the metal arm and the hair that blocks his eyes from view if he keeps his head tipped down, why he doesn’t shy away from a man who doesn’t remove his baseball cap in a church.  

He sits next to you, in the first row of pews, and you hold completely still, because you didn’t hear any weapons moving under the man’s coat, and you wonder if he really is unarmed, if he is not HYDRA, seeking to reprogram you, but he smells strange, like exhaust and tea tree shampoo and the faint tinge of sweat that means he hurried to get here.  He does not smell like HYDRA, like bank vaults and chemicals and electrodes and pain.  

You wonder how to make him leave. You wonder how Bucky Barnes would have done it.  Real smooth, probably, with an easy grin and a suggestive shoulder.  The Winter Soldier does not know that motion, which means you do not know it either.  You stay unmoving.  

“Beautiful stained glass paintings, hm?” the man says, and you finally lift your head to assess the threat - 

The man is wearing a dark pair of glasses, tinged red in the light from the votives.  

(You wonder if you should light a candle for Bucky Barnes.)  

You look at the way the man’s head is tilted by a just-barely-incorrect five degrees too much, and you realize that the man is blind.  

“How would you know?” you say, startled into responding, your voice hoarse with disuse.  

“Yeah, good point,” the man says, “But I like to imagine what they would look like anyways.”  

You look at his hand and see a walking stick, noting that you did not hear its ‘click’ when the man entered the church.  He could be faking - 

“I’m not faking it,” the man says quietly.  “I can hear your heartbeat,” he says, unhelpfully, when you open your mouth to ask how he could know that.  “It sped up just a bit right then.”  

You stare at this man, this strange blind man sitting in a Catholic church with no weapons and no armor, and you suppress a snort.  “Pal, you got even less a sense of self-preservation than my friend, and I didn’t think that was possible.”  

You snap your mouth shut, surprised to hear words that were not the Soldier’s, that may have been - yours? - before.  You are not sure who Bucky Barnes is, but maybe your muscles remember.  Maybe the body knows.  

“Yeah, he’s not exactly the best at getting out of scrapes,” the man laughs, “but then, neither am I.”  

You say nothing, reassessing.  He knows about your target.  He gets into fights, and presumably wins.  You know he is strong - you can sense his muscle mass next to yours.  He has no weapons.  

He is dangerous.  

“Who are you?” you say into your hands, which are still clamped together in front of you, now resting on your thighs, the knives carefully poised to throw.  

“The devil of Hell’s Kitchen,” he says, mouth twisting to one side in a way that reminds you of the Widow.  “But that’s only what my fans call me.  You can call me Matt.”  He extends his hand to you and you rise from your position on the floor.  Almost automatically, your right hand drops its knife, and you are shaking with a stranger.  

“Nice to meet ya, Matt,” the words come again from your mouth unbidden, but you do not try to stop them.  You want to know what Bucky has to say.  

“If you ever need a lawyer in the coming months,” Matt says, removing his glasses and beginning to wipe them on his shirt, “you look up my firm.  Nelson and Murdock,” he says, putting his glasses back on.  You track the movement and see the way his eyes don’t respond to light, how they remain dead, and you know he is truly blind.  

“You’re a lawyer?” Bucky repeats dumbly, and you wince.  Information need not be repeated.  The Asset is able to handle vast amounts of visual or audio information at once and retain - 

“We specialize in hopeless cases,” Matt says, passing over a business card.  There is braille pressed into the card below his name.  “We all have the devil inside our souls, Sergeant Barnes.  What matters is whether we use our demons to hurt people, or to help. Have a good night.”  

 _Not a threat_ , you remind yourself as he stands and walks away.  _He does not threaten the life of the Target.  He is unimportant.  Collateral._

You let him go.  You are proud of yourself, and turn the card absently in your metal fingers.  

You kneel down in front of the cross, pressing your forehead to the ground and praying to hell that nobody else walks in the church because you may kill them.  The stained glass windows make a pool of light around you in the murky light of dawn, and you squeeze your eyes shut because if you see any more colors after a life of grey, you might be sick.  

“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” Bucky says, and you listen to him with interest. The words feel smooth, polished, practiced, the way it feels for the Soldier to hold a sniper rifle in his arms and take a life.  “God, I swear if you’re up there, I gotta - I gotta-” you say, choking on your words because you aren’t sure who you are supposed to be.  Bucky Barnes is the one that kneels before the crucifix, but Bucky Barnes cannot confess to the Soldier’s sins.  You are alone.  

“Give me a mission,” you say at last, because you finally know why you have felt so lost since you broke free of their programming.  You do not have a mission.  You have always had a mission.  “Please, God, give me a goddamn mission, ‘cause I can’t stand this any longer.”

The light moves further across the floor, and you hear a sparrow call from a tree outside.  You stare down at the card in your palm, looking for something, anything - 

You turn the card over.  There is tight script, scrawled on the back of the note like an afterthought.

_You can find him in Brooklyn. He has a brownstone there, six blocks from the Bridge._

_P.S. If anyone asks you if you’ve met a Daredevil, I am NOT Daredevil._

“Thank you,” you say to the cross, and you stand.  

You have a mission.  

(This mission, though - you think you have done this before.) 

 

**July, 2014**

You find him on the fourth of July.  

The Soldier knows that this is Steve Rogers’ birthday.  Bucky Barnes remembers red, white, and blue bunting banners.  The smell of corn dogs on a sea-salt pier.  

You find him on July fourth in a brownstone in Brooklyn.  You waited for him until he came back from his run, found you sitting in the kitchen with a cup of boiled coffee in hand.  It tastes like Bucky remembers it, during the war.  Like stainless steel and over-roasted coffee beans.  

You find him on the fourth of July and he stares at you like he’s never seen anything better.  

“Bucky.”  

You watch his expression, like he’s seeing God for the first time.  “Seems so.”  

Steve starts, and sets his keys down gently on the table by the front door.  “What do you remember?” he asks you.  

(Fragile bones crossing a creaking floor.  A smile with lips like cherry pie.  A kiss like a whisper, like a prayer, like Pentecost and Confession and Ordinary Time. Broad shoulders and an American flag, a shield and stone.  Falling.  Icarus.) 

“Everything.”  

Steve stares at you like he’s never seen something so precious.  “Buck,” he chokes.  “Come home.”  

Home has no meaning - it’s unidentifiable, something abstract, something that other people possess but that the Soldier never had.  You know that Bucky Bares had a home, once, in Brooklyn, with Steve.  You wonder how to reconcile two pasts, two selves.  

The Soldier speaks, but it sounds like Bucky Barnes.  “Give me a mission.”  

(Bucky had a mission before the Soldier did.  You were a weapon far before you were the Soviet’s, far before you were HYDRA’s.  Your original mission - your original mission-)

“You’re safe now, Buck,” he says, as if that fixes everything.  “You don’t need one anymore.  HYDRA’s gone.”  

You stare at him blankly.  “I have always had a mission.”  

You know this is true.  You remember hot sun on your back, bloodied knuckles, a silver knife in your palm, blood falling on sawdust floors.  

“You’re not their weapon anymore, Buck,” Steve says, and you know he speaks the truth, but you cannot shake the fact that you were a weapon long before you were HYDRA’s, long before you were the Russian’s.  You were a weapon from the moment you defended the tiny asthmatic kid in a back alley from one of your classmates that was too dumb to stop when he was ahead.  You broke his nose, and you sealed your fate.  

(How could it ever have ended differently?  A boy with broken lungs and a heart like a lion, getting up for more.) 

“No,” you say.  “But I’m yours.  I was always yours.”  

Steve looks at you like you have split him in two.  You wonder if he could ever know the feeling.  “I can’t give you a mission, I’m not - I’m not HYDRA, not Pierce.  I won’t use you like that.”  

(Scabbed knees in a back alley, semen sliding hot down your chin, blood warm down your fingers, onto your pant leg where you’d have to wash it off later before Steve sees.  A paycheck spent at the pharmacy, haggling for a way to breathe.)

“You’ve always used me like that,” you say, because it’s true.  You know it’s true - you remember.  

“Buck, don’t say that.  They didn’t-”

You watch as he stops, and it comes together.  Everything that was unsaid between you, everything that lay unspoken on the pillows when you would breathe together in the cold, everything that was left silent in the foxholes, amidst the dirt and the grime and the mortar shells.  

“Love me?” you ask, even though you know it’s true. He just never said it.  

(Neither did you.)  

He starts.  “Come home with me, Bucky.  Please.”  

You shake your head.  “I’m broken, Steve.  I remember, but it’s like - like it’s another person.  Another life.”  

Steve opens his arms.  “I don’t care.  Sure, you’re not the guy that I remember, but - neither am I, Buck.”  He stretches out his hand.  “Please.”  

You stare at it, then extend your own.  “Steve, I-”

“I love you, Bucky,” he says, cutting you off.  “Whatever that means, whatever it entails - I’ll do it.”  

You take his hand in yours, and smile.  “’Til the end of the line?” 

Steve grins back, squeezing your hand.  “’Til the end of the line.”  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so sorry this took so long i am currently in south africa and the time zones are weird af also i just got super done with this also also i am daydrunk??? tmi?? ok good job keira
> 
> anyways if you liked it, let me know through kudos/comments! i love all of you and i'm planning on writing an au after this (it's gonna be my project while im abroad!) <333 
> 
> thanks so much for all your kind words and support!


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